About 5 years ago I had my gallbladder taken out. However about 2 years later I began having gallbladder attack symptoms. The pain was identical to my earlier attacks and I began visiting the ER for pain relief. A doctor at UVA looked at me and felt there was a stone left in the stub of the duct left and scheduled me for surgery. In the meantime, I had 3 - 5 attacks a week. It got to the point my husband would take me to the ER and say “You’re gonna want to push 10 MG of Dilaudid with some Zofran and then a 5 MG chaser of Dilaudid in about an hour. Here’s her DR’s card to call for verification she’s not a drug seeker.” Done.
Had the stone taken out and the attacks stopped.
Then I discovered I had developed a bit of addiction to the pain killer and had to detox. Skin crawling, shaking, itching, horrible, horrible.
To this day I still react funny to any pain med other than a mild OTC and just refuse to take anything with an opiate base. Not doing the detoxing again....ever
I was getting iv dilaudid every three hours for five days while waiting for a kidney op. Between the vicious headaches and perpetual hyper-pareidolia, I hope I never see the damnable stuff again.