Gallbladder and immunotherapy

 Two weeks ago I went in for immunotherapy but was told I had to wait a week.  I had been having diarrhea for a week along with some stomach cramps and throwing up.  Nobody else had gotten sick in my family and it all seemed related to eating food so I wasn't worried about being contagious. They said that you can lose a lot of electrolytes through diarrhea so that is why they were waiting a week to do immunotherapy.  They drew blood and gave me fluids.  The next morning I went back in for more fluids and found out that my potassium was low so they gave me more fluids with potassium which takes 3 hours.  It was a long day. 

Last week I went in for immunotherapy and had had a much better week with no diarrhea so was able to receive my immunotherapy medicine.  It was Valentine's day so Joe and I celebrated by going to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.  It was really yummy! Then I went home and slept the afternoon away.  I am allergic to one of the immunotherapy medicines so they give me Benadryl which makes me very sleepy.  

Later that evening I got up to make dinner and my stomach wasn't feeling good again and I was having diarrhea again.  I thought it was from the immunotherapy because the doctor had decided it was just one of the side effects of the immunotherapy. Diarrhea and stomach upset can happen from the medicines, it just isn't very common. As the evening went on, I tried taking a bath to help because the pain in my stomach was getting worse and worse.  I finally got out because it wasn't helping at all.  I then took some Tylenol, anti nausea meds and gas x because I thought maybe one of them would help.  After an hour I finally told Joe to take me to the ER because I was pretty sure it was my gallbladder that was causing the pain and stomach upset.  

By this point it was about 11 pm.  We went to the ER and luckily they weren't busy at all. They were able to get me back to a room almost immediately and drew blood and administered pain meds pretty quickly.  (It didn't feel super quick at the time, but it really was rather fast) I finally started feeling a little better. They did an ultrasound and discovered the problem was my gallbladder.  I've known that I had gallstones for several years.  Apparently the gallstones had gotten pretty big and were the size of kidney beans.  (I didn't have my gallbladder out earlier because it wasn't causing me pain and hadn't for several years, we were following it with my GI doctor and keeping an eye on it) They called the on call surgeon and decided to admit me into the hospital and wait until the next morning to decide if we'd be having surgery then or calling and scheduling surgery for a later date. They were concerned because of my cancer and wanted to keep a closer eye on me. 

They took us to a room around 12:30 and started getting us checked in.  Shortly after getting to my room the pain started coming back.  They said to let them know if I was more than a 5 on the pain scale and they would see what they could do.  Around 2:30 am they were finally done asking all the questions for admitting me and I was in quite a bit of pain.  They were able to give me a little more pain meds and started me on an antibiotic and an antifungal.  The pain meds only worked for about an hour again. The rest of the night was mostly me trying to ignore the pain and not sleeping. They had attached some socks that are connected to a machine that inflates one at a time every couple seconds.  They prevent blood clots. They also make it really hard to sleep when you are already in pain and struggling to fall asleep.  The next morning the surgeon came in and said that they would be doing surgery that day.  He had other gallbladder surgeries already scheduled that morning and he would fit me in when he could.  I spent the entire day trying to do visualization and singing songs in my head to distract me from the pain.  They couldn't give me much more pain medicine and it didn't matter anyway because nothing was helping.  They came in around 10 am and told me that surgery was scheduled for 1pm.  At 1 pm they came in and said there was one person in front of me and that they needed to give me a dye and we'd have to wait an hour after that.  At around 2:30 they finally came in to get me and I got into the surgery room at 3pm.  When I woke up around 6 pm I felt much better.  As the pain meds wore off from surgery there was some surgery pain but it felt much better than the pain I'd been in the entire day.  They had me stay another night at the hospital because my gallbladder was pretty bad when they removed it.  It was gangrenous and dead. It was very enlarged and the gallbladder wall was very thick.  The doctor said the pain meds hadn't worked before the surgery because the gallbladder was so inflamed that the vein that goes to it couldn't give it the pain meds I was receiving.  

We're pretty sure that the gallbladder turned so bad within the three weeks from my PET/CT Scan. In the PET scan it showed gallstones but no thickening or inflammation. We're also pretty sure that the diarrhea and stomach upset I'd had for the few weeks prior to surgery was all from the gallbladder and not actually from my immunotherapy.  I'm so thankful that it is out now and that I'm starting to feel better. I'm also thankful for the help we received from friends this last week after surgery.