“Hi all
Have come across this thread as a result of continuing my research into my partners upper abdominal pains.

Today my partner was discharged from Hospital after being admitted on Saturday morning with severe upper abdominal pains (again)

She had her Gall Bladder removed approx 7 years ago and has been suffering from bouts of pain ever since, varying from mild to extreme (9/10 on a pain scale and so say much worse than child birth).

She has had many tests over the years to try and diagnose the cause, Xray, MRI Scan, Barium meal, Endoscopy (camera into stomach), endless blood tests but all have come back negative apart from some elevated levels from the liver.

The symptoms are described as a pain at the front and upper abdomen (just below the sternum)
It starts off mild and in the extreme case builds up to an intense pain then eases off again.
Sometimes it will pass on its own before getting to the “”severe”” stage but on four occasions (inc this weekend) the pain has reached the severe stages and doesn’t fade. On all 4 occasions when it has got this bad she has ended up in hospital on morphine to control the pain.
When the pain reaches its more severe stages it starts to radiate round to her back as well.
She describes the bad attacks as starting mild, building up to severe and then easing off again. Then the length of time at severe level increases whilst the easing back to mild decreases, leaving her in almost constant severe pain.

In addition to all the tests that have been done, she has also tried many medications to try and control or eliminate the bouts of pain.
For the last 18 months or so she has been taking Amitriptyline which is actually an Anti-Depressant that has also been proven to deal with chronic pain among other things [URL=””http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitriptyline””%5DAmitriptyline – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/URL]

The Amitriptyline has been working very well so far with no severe outbreaks of pain and only the odd mild outbreak.
Unfortunately she is not able to take the amitriptyline at the moment due to being 32 weeks pregnant.

Once the baby is born I want to start investigating the cause of her condition again as we would prefer to deal with the cause instead of her just taking medication for the rest of her life.

One area that I want the doctors to look at is Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction as the symptoms of this seem consistant with what my partner has been experiencing. More information of this can be found here: [URL=””http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/sphincter-oddi-dysfunction.html””%5DSphincter of Oddi Dysfunction[/URL]

There seem to be many people who experience similar problems post gall bladder removal and I have seen first hand on many occasions just how painfull it can be.

I hope my account is of use to people and wish you luck in trying to find a cure for your problems.”