Paging Keriamon........

No, the radioactive stuff is just radioactive stuff. It's not a medicine of any sort, so there's no reaction to it, unless you are allergic to it (someone else on here said that they heard it was shellfish based). Now, the second stuff they put in will cause your gall bladder to empty, and that's the uncomfortable part. It will make lying down uncomfortable and you will feel nauseated. That will last about 5 minutes, tops, I seem to recall.

You're 100 times more likely to stress yourself into a heart attack than the medicine for the test to cause one. If tests make you really nervous, then call your doctor's office and see if they will give you a valium to take beforehand. There shouldn't be any problem with taking one before the test, so long as you have somone to drive you. Of course, come to think of it, a valium might relax your gall bladder and digestive tract and it might not react accurately.

Anyways, I've had this done three times and I'm not dead yet, and I didn't vomit on anyone, so you'll be okay. It's not as bad as a colonoscopy, I assure you.

It shouldn't give you D, but I can't say that for certain, as I had D off and on all the time, so how could I notice? Anyways, it didn't need to make me go to the bathroom before the test was over.

Make sure you tell your technician that you have some issues with tests and lying on your back. He or she may be able to play soft music for you or tell you jokes or something to keep you engaged. My mother came back with me for my first test, so if you need your husband, ask to see if he can come back and talk to you because you get panicy otherwise. My stepfather did my other two tests, so I watched the screen and asked questions while it was going on.

No, you don't have to hold your breath, but you do need to lie still or the picture of your gall bladder will jump around and it won't be able to track how much is emptying out of it very well.

The way my stepdad's room was laid out, the screen was where anyone could see it. You should see a lot of bright white stuff in a big spot on it after you get the radioactive dye; that will be the radioactive dye concentrating. After they give you the dumping stuff, though, it's harder to see it moving out. It will scatter some, but probably won't be very obvious to you, especially at a distance.

I don't know what a normal amylase lab value is, but my bad gall bladder never showed up in any blood work.

Nope, the hida scan doesn't look at the pancreas.

No, you can breathe. As you have to lay there for about 30 minutes, asking you not to breathe would be a bit bad, lol.

You have to lay on the table for about 30 minutes. It probably depends on the technician, but I seem to remember be offered the chance to get up and go to the bathroom if I needed to, before the second injection.

Yes, you will have a pillow under your head. If you need a pillow somewhere else (like under a knee or under your back), let the technician know so he can get you situated before the test begins.

You don't take off any of your clothing.

I think the test is pretty well in equal measure, with about 15 minutes to get the radioactive stuff concentrated and about 15 minutes to track the GB emptying.

It's my understanding of the liver/bile/gall bladder thing that the liver produces a steady amount of bile to fill up the gall bladder (it's not that big, you know)--mind you, I don't know how long that process takes. When you eat, though, the gall bladder dumps out bile, and the liver fills it back up again and the gall bladder holds it, waiting for food to come in again. So, think of the GB as a holding tank.

I have no medical proof for this, but I think my GB problem was that my liver produced too much bile and didn't let the gall bladder empty as much as it should, overflowed it, etc. and that's why it was chronically inflamed and why it would perodically dump out large amounts of bile when my stomach was empty and make me sick. Even now that the GB is gone, I have too much bile coming out if I don't take the Welchol to soak it up.

And yes, when you no longer have a GB, your liver will just trickle bile out of the bile duct into your intestines. Supposedly the bile duct can stretch out overtime and form a pocket so that when you eat, and the liver thinks, hey, time to refill the GB, it will push the bile out of the bile duct pocket and that sort of works like a GB. But I don't think that's happened with me. But that's why eating triggers D in so many people without GBs; when you eat, the liver just makes more bile and it doesn't get put into the digestive process when and where the gall bladder would put it, so that causes problems. I think maybe also the gall bladder being full is what turns off the liver's bile production, and without the GB, it just keeps on producing bile, so you end up with bile in your guts when you don't have any food, and that can also cause D.

Sarita might can tell you better how that all works (or doesn't work); some info I was able to glean off the web, but some is just hunches on my part, based on how I seem to work (or not work).

And no, I didn't feel sensations in my body anywhere but my upper chest/abdomen area. Felt similar to a typical gall bladder attack with nausea, tightness in the chest, a bit of pain.

Good luck with the scan Cathy... will be waiting to hear from you

Thanks Des and Keriamon.
I'm back! Actually, it was a piece of cake......except for the severe hip pain I got after about 45 minutes of laying flat on that hard table! I thought I'd go crazy. I had to lie perfectly still for 1 hour, then I ate a pudding with 9 grams of fat, and very little happened afterwards.
The tech said that right after I ate the pudding, they have to film until 35% of the gallbladder has emptied, or 1 hour....whichever comes first. I wasn't sure I could last an hour with my hips hurting so much.
She stopped after a half hour and said "you're done!" I was glad for that. But on the way home, I started wondering.........I know 35% might be enough to make sure I'm emptying enough........but how do they determine if I empty too much if they stop after 35%?? I sure hope she checked for everything. I really didn't have any symptoms.
I asked her a simple question and she said "I'm not allowed to say anything"...........so I'm sure she might not have known the reasons behind things.
I really expected more of a reaction. 9 grams of fat doesn't seem like that much! I asked her about the medication they sometimes give to get the gallbladder going and she said they don't use that anymore, since it causes too much cramping and they just use the pudding now.
Anyhow.........I'm very relieved, and I have the feeling my gallbladder is fine.........but I still need to figure out why I feel nauseous and yukky alot of the time. I think I'll finally go see the GI guy who did my colonoscopy, and then onto the ENT.
Thanks again for your help everyone.

Thanks Des,
Actually my doctor just called and said it was normal. I have an ejection of 37.9%.
I'm going to give myself the week off, but next Monday make an appointment with the new GI doc.
Now I'm paranoid that its my small bowel!
Another possibility is that IBS just got alot worse. I'll talk this over with the GI guy. But IBS shouldn't make you nauseous all the time, should it?
I suppose there are conditions where your gallbladder is normal, but your intestines can't handle the bile??

I seem to be going through very similar problems that I went through when I was going through perimenopause. When I told my doc I wondered if it was hormone-related, he said "You're in menopause, so its not that". Wouldn't you know a guy would say that? I've talked to so many women who are still having symptoms long after their periods stop.
I guess the OB/GYN should be on the list too. I'm going to be a busy girl!
Well........I guess I get to keep all my parts for a little longer! :)

Thanks Sarita,
No, he hasn't mentioned gastroparesis, but I have only been seeing my Internist and not a GI doc. I think I have had gastroparesis in the past, but it seemed to get better. For several months I haven't had the bloating and pressure that I associate with that condition.......just this nausea/dizziness. My diarrhea is worse too.
I have fibromyalgia. I realize that no one really knows what that is. But this seems like a huge flare of that.......including sinus, ectopy, GI changes, depression, sleep problems, muscle/joint pains, etc., etc. I almost hate running to each specialty, trying to figure out what's going on, when I really feel it is something more with my hard drive! And even if I went to another neurologist, I have the feeling still nothing would show up.
I am considering an antidepressant. I'm thinking that stress causes these horrible flares and that maybe that medication would somewhat protect me from the stresses. I've avoided one up til now because of the potential side-effects.
Also........I came off my Toprol (beta blocker) last December, and things have slowly gone downhill from there. My BP is fine and my heartrate is fine, but I'm feeling all these pains everywhere. It had some side-effects which I hated (intensely hungry 24/7, total lack of motivation, no stamina, no brain), but I'm now wondering if alot of my "fibromyalgia" is something like too many beta adrenergic receptors all throughout my body.?? I'm always trying to come up with theories to explain what the hell is happening to me. Every test is always normal, yet I feel so bad I can hardly function some days.
So I am considering going back on the Toprol, at a low dose, to see if these various pains and problems don't start easing up.
Oh to have a normal body! People with bodies that behave truly don't know how good they have it!

Fibro can cause a lot of bowel problems, so this all may be related to it. My mother has fibro and had a doctor tell her that going organic can help; something about chemicals and preservatives causing a more severe reaction. She said it has seemed to help lessen the severity of the pain, but, like you, she's now having some bowel problems to boot.

Pudding, huh? Sound better than the chemical I got; yes, it does cause a lot more problems than just eating something. Although my stepfather said that injecting it a little bit at a time over the course of a minute or two kept it from being quite as bad on people as injecting all of it at once.

If you are having bile problems--i.e. yellow, burning stools--they can still prescribe you the Welchol, like I'm on, even with a good gall bladder. All it does is soak up excess bile in your intestines. Sometimes people have excess bile in their intestines because their intestines are just moving things through too fast and there's no time for the body to reabsorb the bile.