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I had read so many comments on line about how intensely painful gallstone are, and how that pain is no joke.

I was in my second year of nursing school and the chronic niggling abdominal pain I'd had for several months changed in an instant to the most crippling colicky pain I had ever felt. I swear it radiated throughout my entire body. The way it "gripped" in my entire torso made me feel like my heart was seizing, but it was just my gallbladder full of stones.

I knew immediately what it was. I'd been ignoring the niggling pain because I had stage 4 endometriosis at the time so abdominal pain wasn't unusual. And it's a common phenomenon for medical students and nursing students to experience strange pshycogenic symptoms, especially as they learn about a new disease, and the niggling pain had started around the same time I was doing my unit on biliary and hepatic anatomy and physiology, so when my gallbladder was "grumbling" I just assumed I was imagining it.

I booked into my GP, who instantly agreed it sounded like gallstones, she ordered an ultrasound and liver function test. My gallbladder was full of stones, most were tiny, 2-3mm, but there were 4 chonky bois, and my Liver function test was all sorts of abnormal.

Up until this point, everyone had treated this very seriously. My GP was rushing around like it was urgent, when I told my teachers at nursing school that I'll likely need time off because I was dealing with gallstones they all acted like it was a catagory 2 emergency, and everyone had this assumption that in less than 2 months I'd be gallbladder-less.

I was referred for surgery. That was April, I got my intake letter and my surgery was scheduled for October.

So I spent the next 6 months in occasional agony. I was lucky that I'd get a solid 3-4 days without pain, and then I'd get an "attack" that would last a few hours but fade out.

But as it got closer to October, the attacks were lasting over 2 days, by the end I was delirious. I went to the ER twice out of desperation. Both times they gave me buscopan and told me to go home and wait for my surgery. My GP prescribed me some muscle relaxants which helped a bit.

On the night before my surgery, I was having the worse pain of the whole ordeal by far. I was fasting for surgery so I couldn't take the pain relief my GP had prescribed because it was an oral tablet. I wasn't getting any sleep, so I just went to the hospital at 2am (instead of 8am for my surgery).

I went to the ER and explained that my surgery was in the morning, I'm fasting so can't take my meds, but the pain is unbearable. They gave me, you guessed it, buscopan. I sat in the waiting room and at 7:45am said goodbye and walked over to the day surgery wing.

Everyone I told was baffled, saying gallstones were so incredibly painful there's no way I'd have to wait that long for surgery and not get proper pain relief while I waited. Even my GP was confused, I saw her once a fortnight between August and October because I was just in such a sorry state. My skin was yellow, I was shitting clay, I couldn't keep much food down, I'd lost a lot of weight. My GP would spend most of the appointment on the phone with the surgical intake team asking "what the fuck?"

But 9 years after my surgery, my best friend started getting gallbladder attacks. She went to the ER, they confirmed the stones with an ultrasound, and they referred her for surgery. 2 months later she still hadn't gotten her intake letter, so when she had another bad attack she went to the ER and they gave her buscopan and advil and told her to be patient, the surgical list is backed up. She got her letter a few days after that, surgery was booked for August.

She scrounged together some money to see a private surgeon, she saw him on February 10th, and she had her gallbladder removed on February 15th, and they sent her home with endone for the 5 days between. It took a chunk out of the savings that she and her partner want to use for a house deposit, but there's no way she could have made it to August with how much pain she was in.