How A Stomach Ache Saved My Life And Forced Me To Examine The Gut Microbiome
After the surgical removal of my gallbladder, I began to listen to the screams from within
It was french fries that put me over the edge. As I swallowed the last french fry I would ever eat, I felt nothing particularly notable. I snuggled lazily into bed while watching a movie and fell asleep. I woke up approximately 2 hours later with an ache in my upper abdomen.
It was uncomfortable and the pain was in an unfamiliar place. Normally a tummy ache will resolve itself in simple ways. Knowing this, I lay back down hugging an ice pack to the sore spot, and fell back asleep. The next time I woke up it was several hours later and the pain was still nagging at me.
The pain was not high up in my pain threshold. I could have accepted that pain for a while longer because it was not unbearable. The persistence of the ache was a signal of warning to me. I knew that I had developed a problem with the machine which is my body.
My calm demeanor and the fact that the pain still allowed me to move freely without trouble presented a strange interaction with the physicians upon my arrival in their emergency room. When I was asked what number my pain was on a scale from one through ten I gave it a three. The medical staff shrugged and proceeded to order examinations of varying types to rule out stuff and pinpoint the issue.
Using various machines that see beyond the pesky barriers like skin and muscles they started to detect the issue. An ultrasound revealed a small blur in my gallbladder which led to the need for a more precise examination. Next, computed tomography (or CT) scan was conducted. Something was there that needed repair — but nobody could comment on it legally except the radiologist assigned.
Many hours passed while waiting for the glance of expertise from the acting physicians at the hospital. This part is the worst part from a patient’s point of view. Without knowing the politics or work involved in the medical industry it is tempting to criticize the doctors who have the final say on things that feel so terrible. It takes a minute for a person to look at a picture and determine what it is. When it is a radiologist that you need to look at a picture it takes a very long time. I guess it is because they have a special authority to actually diagnose stuff and recommend treatment plans.
I refrain from badmouthing anyone in this type of situation. I didn’t have what it takes to get anywhere NEAR med school. Education is just one of the reasons physicians are allowed to dole out medical advice. With my life in their hands, I listen to them with much respect and would not dare to criticize their practice solely because of wait times.
The ache never calmed during this initial period of time in the emergency room. This fact is what kept the medical staff motivated to keep me comfortable while looking for the issue. To ease my pain and I suspect to make the waiting less like torture the medical staff was permitted to dose me heavily with painkillers. That was the thing that made the time pass without a complaint from me. I was loopy and napped a lot while waiting.
I hadn’t eaten since that last fateful fry. A full 48 hours passed and I was not allowed a crumb of food and only a sip of water was allowed to quench my thirst. Waiting for a radiologist to look at the images from the CT scan took what felt like the longest hours of my life. Hunger pains were not something I have often felt.
The nurses sympathized but all of them kindly explained that I could only eat after it was decided whether or not I would need to be rushed to a surgical table. The reason made sense because if you are rushed to surgery based on the results of a scan they don’t want you to vomit mid-surgery. I was starving but I was fine with it.
It was a good thing I didn’t convince the nurses to sneak me a snack because ultimately it was discovered that I had a pile of disgusting little stones in my gallbladder.
Gallstones are made of cholesterol and bilirubin- and are a result of bad diet habits- to simply summarize. Bad food choices over many years caused this problem, but I am so thankful this is how my body chose to handle it. My gallbladder was removed and I was forced to form a new lifestyle when it comes to food.
It could have been my heart or another vital organ, but luckily a gallbladder can be removed entirely and the digestive system can function normally as long as a certain diet is maintained thereafter. If this had never happened to me then my terrible eating habits would have continued and would have eventually caused heart problems or blood problems — which could have killed me.
After they yanked out that icky sack of rocks known as my gallbladder they sewed me back together and told me to be a good girl and follow a low-fat diet. Easy enough. Right? Well… I wish I could say it has been easy but that would be a lie.
In a quest for information about my own body, I began to study healthy digestion since I am officially down one entire digestive organ. A popular topic in recent science pointed me toward the gut microbiome. Sound nasty right?
The gut microbiome describes something alive inside a human body. Inside the average human digestive tract, there are trillions of microorganisms called microbes.
Thousands of species of microbes can live in the stomach alone and many more throughout the intestines and other parts of the body. There are some species that help the system by aiding in proper digestion, and there are some species with a more greedy presence that if given the power to steer will practically drive a person right to the cookie aisle at the grocery store.
The microbes that beg for sugar and fatty foods are the ones I now call the bad guys.
Normally all the various gut microbes work with each other or near each other without causing trouble to the person they live inside. Sometimes a person will develop an imbalance by overindulging in sugary treats or fried food. Alternately someone might upset their gut balance by underfeeding the microbes that use certain healthy foods to correctly digest the contents of the stomach.
In my case, I was eating too much unhealthy fat and sugar and not eating enough green leafy vegetables to help counter the problem my food choices were slowly causing. I was doubling down on “the bad guys” and starving “the good guys”.
All these years I thought I loved cake because it is delicious. But it turns out I was feeding those sweets to the bad gut microbes. They are a horrible microscopic militia working constantly to increase its own numbers. All they do is multiply in what appears to be a constant effort to be fed more of the foods they thrive on.
I cannot help but imagine a foul group of moody monsters at their perceived meal time. They thrive on things that are bad for me but good for them — such as high fructose corn syrup and unnatural fats. Those little monsters have been gobbling that stuff up as I poison myself with it. Meanwhile, they only get stronger and more demanding.
When that little voice says “Lori you need a cupcake.” It’s not my inner voice. It’s also not schizophrenia. The sense of nagging … sometimes called a craving is a message being delivered by something that is alive inside me. It is an overwhelming amount of very tiny voices screaming for feedings on the stuff they need to thrive. Little jerks!
All joking aside, my new mission is to give “the good guys” more healthy fuel so they may more easily bring the microbiome back to a balanced state. I feel it happening already because I have been thrown into a healthy food lifestyle by necessity — thanks to the emergency gallbladder removal.
I see food as fuel for the machine which is my body now, instead of a source of comfort and indulgence. I am on a mission to find the cleanest and purest fuel possible so I can nurture and encourage positive gut microbe growth. I miss tacos, but I love being alive.
Cheers to good health.
On this same topic — I recommend reading this piece by an esteemed author and friend Shin Jie Yong.