Dear Editor,
I am sharing this experience so that others may learn from it—
My 76 year old, otherwise very healthy sister died in Ottawa, Ontario in late August from a gallstone that she was advised by the specialist she went to, that unless it was giving her a lot of discomfort, she didn’t need to act on it. So, she left it for a year and ended up in the emergency room with a severe attack at 1 a.m., by ambulance. Because her blood pressure was too low, the doctors weren’t able to give her sedatives, otherwise her blood pressure would go even lower, so she was in excruciating pain. The emergency doctors were trying to wait to see if her blood pressure would rise sufficiently for them to go ahead and operate. It did not, and they couldn’t wait any longer, so went ahead with the operation. The gallstone had lodged itself into the bile duct, there was a leak in the gallbladder, which aloud toxins to leak into her system, the pancreas was perforated and her kidneys shut down completely. She ended up going into a coma and the doctors said that she would more than likely have brain damage if she lived, and would be on dialysis for the rest of her life. She was taken off life-support one day later. Such a senseless, senseless death.
On the internet, it states in one paragraph, that if left untreated, can be deadly, as infection and other complications can spread to the liver and the pancreas,
Gail Sawchuk, Princeton, B.C.