Gallbladder removal to start Remicade treatments

[LemSat87]

Hi everyone,

So back in June my GI wanted to start me on Remicade to treat my Crohns Disease as I've been having issues this year with a perianal abscess & fistula in that area. Had 3 seton drains put in since February and he along with the colo-rectal surgeon believe the remicade will help to close those up. There was a hold up with getting everything set up and finally get the treatments scheduled.

A few days before i'm due to take my 1st remicade infusion I get walloped with a fever and one hell of a crohns attack. End up in the ER as I wasn't able to sleep and was in a lot of pain and they ended up admitting me after the CT showed increased inflammation in the colon and I also had a bladder infection they wanted to treat. Couple days into the admission they found my liver enzymes elevated and tested the gallbladder to find that wasn't functioning properly (surprise surprise with my luck) At the time the general surgeon didn't feel surgery was necessary and wanted to let me proceed with the remicade treatments to see if that would help everything. Well after that my GI said he wouldn't let me start the treatments until after the gallbladder was removed, as starting the remicade would cause issues with surgery should an emergency surgery have been required down the road.

So I follow up with the surgeon tomorrow to discuss everything and I already know they're going to want to take it out now and get the surgery scheduled. There is also a hernia in that same area along one of my past surgical sites which they'll fix at the same time, so it's going to be an open surgery. Needless to say i'm quite bummed over the prospect of another surgery which is going to require general anesthesia, as i'm becoming less & less tolerant of that type of sedation....I swear my body hates me :hallo3:

Anyone else have a similar experience and can give any advice?

 

[Caitlyn336]

I had a similar experience. I was feeling very unwell and thought that I was flaring badly. I ended up admitted to the hospital for about a week. They found out I had contracted mono (yay) but there was a secondary bacterial infection that they were not able to find. I was currently on remicade every six weeks so hidden infection not so good.

After being in there for almost a week and loosing about 15 pounds they realized that the right side of my stomach was oddly distended. It was my gallbladder. After imaging I was in surgery within two hours. My recovery was not affected by my remicade but I also got it out laprascopically.

The surgeon explained to me before surgery that it is really common if you get quite sick for your gallbladder to feel the brunt of the inflammation. The size of mine made us unable to watch it and see if it got better.

Once I had recovered I do notice that it is gone, but only in the best way. I have realized that some of the pain that I thought was related to the crohn's was actually my gallbladder. We all missed it because we were looking at other areas of my colon instead.

As for sedation issues, you may be able to talk to the doctor before surgery about that. There are actually many options for drugs for general anesthesia but most surgery places stick with one or two that they know well. May be time to branch out from those ones.