The shoulder bone's connected to the... gallbladder?

What the heck? That's what most of us have said when we've told this story, but it's true. Pain in your right shoulder is symptomatic of gallbladder issues. I've been having increasing pain in my right shoulder all week and Friday afternoon, I couldn't take it anymore. I thought I had re-hashed something from my shoulder surgery. I called the St. V.'s ask-a-nurse line since my OB's office was closed to ask about taking Tylenol. After 10 minutes on the phone she urged me to go to the ER because to her it could have been either my gallbladder or an anchor from my shoulder was coming loose (they put 2 in during the last surgery). EEEEk!

I felt a little dumb heading to the ER for this, but as Brad pointed out: 1. I was in pain, more than Tylenol was capable of handling and 2. I'm pregnant. We can't be too careful.

Away we went and the staff at the hospital was super great. Blood work, etc. then we got sent down to ultrasound. No biggie...until she finally found my gall bladder on top of my ribs -- After about 10-15 minutes of scanning (which entails her trying to push the ultrasound wand into my ribcage) I was crying. Not a lot of tears, but they were there. After all that, she said she didn't see any gall stones. Then, she was kind enough to move over the Stuffy-- guess who was sleeping while I was writhing in pain? Still sitting in the breech position and groovin' right along with his 160 bpm heartrate. It was comforting to see him and know at least he was doing alright.

They wheeled me back upstairs (Brad was with me the whole time, thankfully!) the last thing they could do was call my OB office on-call. The OB asked for them to do the heart rate, which they found quick and was the 160...very good. His suggestion for the ER doc was that even though there were no stones, I could be experiencing a "colicky gallbladder". We then were told that I need to switch to a bland diet, avoiding fats and spicy food. And to follow up with my OB on Monday morning, they'll be expecting me.

Ummm...by fatty and spicy foods, you mean the stuff I've been eating all week? -- let's review my menu of late:

1. Ham noodle casserole (take a stick of butter and throw some egg noodles and ham in there)
2. Tortellini soup (italian sausage, cheese tortellini and every spice I could find) - ate it every day for lunch last week, by the way.
3. Cheeseburgers and fries from Five Guys
4. LOTS of chicken mcnuggets with hot mustard sauce and fries
5. Steak basted in butter and loaded (and I mean loaded) baked potato
6. Vanilla ice cream with (insert cookies, fudge sauce, etc. here)
7. Tagalongs and Thin Mints
8. Sausage biscuit and hashbrowns

No, I can't imagine why my already hormone stressed gallbladder could be having trouble!?

I'm trying to be better this weekend, but it's hard. Hopefully I'll get some more definitive answers from Dr. Garrett tomorrow with a more detailed plan about what to do from here...maybe I'll be really lucky and it NOT be my gallbladder and we can have some of #4 and #6 for dinner tomorrow! :)

No new news on the house yet, still waiting for the elevation cert. to come back. Lots of happy thoughts, please!!!!!

Oh! And we may have found a great babysitter- more on that on Tuesday!

Have a cheeseburger day...I mean GOOD day everyone!