I went to A&E on Saturday night with pain that wrapped round to my back

Started 17 May 2025 · 8 replies · 352 hearts · read 5.8k times

GwynethAberdare, UK · 17 May 2025

about a year ago

Valleys born, blunt and warm, and I am going to be blunt about this because I nearly did not go and I want somebody reading this at midnight to go.

Friday evening, about eight, I got a pain under my ribs on the right. Not indigestion. It built for about an hour and then it stopped being something I could sit through — it went round my side and up under my shoulder blade, and I could not find a position that helped. I was on all fours on the landing carpet at one point. I was sick twice. I kept telling my sister it was probably the medicine and I would ride it out until Monday, and she said, and I quote, get your coat.

What happened when we got there. Triage at half eleven, seen properly at about two. They took bloods, including the pancreas one, and asked me twice about the medicine — not in a snide way, just wanting the full picture. The doctor was about twenty-eight and thorough. Bloods came back not showing pancreatitis, which was the thing they had been ruling out. They gave me something for the pain that finally touched it, kept me until the morning, and sent me for a scan on the Monday.

The scan found gallstones. So now I have a surgical referral, a leaflet, and a prescriber who has paused my medicine while the surgeons look at me, which she explained properly on the phone on Tuesday.

Two things I want on the record. One: the pain was not like anything I have had before and if you are wondering whether yours is that kind of pain, you will know. Two: I spent four hours telling myself I was making a fuss. Nobody at that hospital treated me as if I were making a fuss. Not one person.

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TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

Gwyneth, I am glad you went and I am glad your sister said what she said.

For anyone finding this thread later, I want to be precise, because this is the kind of post that gets misremembered. Severe pain in the upper abdomen that wraps to the back and will not settle, especially with vomiting, is on the short list of things that need to be looked at the same day rather than tolerated. That is not because it is usually the worst thing — most of the time it is not — but because the two conditions worth ruling out are ruled out with a blood test and a scan and not by waiting until Monday.

Gallstones turn up more often in people losing weight at any pace and by any method, and that is well described, so it is not a strange outcome. Your prescriber pausing while surgery looks at you is a normal and careful thing to do.

The thing I would most like people to steal from this post is the four hours she spent deciding she was making a fuss.

54me too 11

AshSunderland, UK

A&E nights, and I will say this as often as I am allowed: the fuss calculation is the most dangerous part of most people’s evening.

Nobody on that night shift was annoyed to see you. A woman on all fours on a landing carpet with pain going into her shoulder blade is exactly who the department is for. The people we quietly worry about are the ones who have been doing that at home since Wednesday.

Also, from our side — telling us about the medicine straight away is genuinely useful. It changes what we look for first.

49me too 8

MaudGhent, BE

Retired midwife. Delivers straight talk, apparently, so here it is: pain that stops you finding a position is a different animal from pain you can sit through. I taught that distinction for thirty years and it holds up.

Gwyneth, well done to your sister. Every family needs one person who says get your coat.

46me too 6

BaySt Ives, UK

Sea swimming and reflux, unrelated, probably. Mine was gallstones too, found in February, and the bit I would add is what happened afterwards, since you are at the beginning of it.

Surgical clinic in April, laparoscopic in June, four small holes and a fortnight of being careful. It was much less of an event than I had built up over the spring. My prescriber restarted me eight weeks after, slower than before, and it has been fine.

41me too 5

CarlMiddlesbrough, UK

Sixty-one, type 2, doing this for my grandkids and my feet. I did the opposite of what you did last autumn — sat on chest pain for two days convinced it was reflux from the medicine.

It was reflux from the medicine, as it turned out. But I did not know that for two days and I would not do it again. Being right is not the same as having been sensible.

44me too 9

HollyBath, UK

Menopause and this at the same time, nobody warned me, and I mention it because I have spent two years having everything attributed to one of the two.

The pause while the surgeons look at you would have frightened me a year ago. It is worth saying that a pause is not the end of anything. It is a queue.

33me too 7

IslaOban, UK

Island ferries and injection schedules, so my version of your Friday night involves a decision about whether the last boat is worth catching.

I did catch it, in March, for something that turned out to be nothing. I would catch it again. There is no prize for the person who waited on an island.

38me too 6

GwynethAberdare, UK

Surgical clinic came through for the eleventh of June, which is faster than I expected.

Bay, thank you — the four small holes and a careful fortnight is exactly the information I wanted and could not find anywhere without falling into a forum full of horrors.

And I have told my sister that a room full of strangers has commended her. She is unbearable about it.

47me too 4

Facilitator note — Tomás

Facilitator note — Tomás. I hold side-effect-support and this thread is the closest thing we have to a teaching case, so I have pinned it.

Notice what the room did not do. Nobody offered Gwyneth a remedy. Nobody told her what her pain was. Six people confirmed that going in was right and one person told her what the next few months of a gallbladder referral actually look like, which was the only information she was short of.

Most of what gets discussed in this circle is the ordinary tax — the queasy fortnight, the indignities, the sore injection site. A small number of things are not that, and this was one of them. If you are not sure which you have got, that uncertainty is itself the reason to ring somebody.

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