Laparoscopy Gallbladder removal Problem?

I have a friend that just got his gallbladder removed thursday. Its four days later and he is feeling an awful amount of pain. He says it hurts on a scale of 1-10 a 10..Mostly in the abdominal area. The incision at the belly button is red and swollen. He does not appear yellow but seems to be getting worse overall. The darvacett only lasts 4 hrs and he has started bleeding from his nose. What could be wrong?

He's just going thru the normal postoperative phase. You have to remember that the pain threshold for men is usually lower than that of women. If the Darvocet is not holding him up with the pain; he should contact the surgeon for other prescriptive painkillers. He should immediately see the doctor anyway for the bleeding of his nose. That is not normal and certainly not related to his gallbladder surgery. Post-operative pains from a gallbladder surgery can be very painful. But the pain is not comparable to the pain during the pre-op gallbladder attacks he had before surgery. You might comfort him with this.

In the absence of fever, any induration or tenderness in the postoperative site is totally normal. If he has an infection, most likely, the Doctors will order antibiotics. Nowadays, it's a common practice for surgeons to order preop dosage of antibiotics to avoid infections. So most likely, this was done and the course is continued if he was hospitalized after. As it was on a same day surgery or short stay, you just have to monitor him for any signs of infection.


For the pain management, you might suggest him to try Motrin. I have had a lot of surgeries in my life. I find Motrin more effective for pain control .Some people find Vicodin more effective. it's a prescribed pain killer and can become addicting. However, Motrin is a NSAID so it doesn't contain caffeine and acid related to aspirin and aspirin product such as Darvocet which might cause bleeding.

Thanks for the choice. Glad to be of help. Going to ER can be expensive and unnecessary. Report It

I don't know what could be wrong but it sounds like he needs to go back to the ER immediately. I had this procedure on Christmas day and any pain I had been experiencing was completely gone after the surgery. The only thing I felt was minor irratation at the incision sites. I didn't even need pain medication after. Tell your friend to contact his physician or go to the ER right away!

If his incision is red and swollen, he may have an infection somewhere and he needs to go have it checked, tonight. If not ER, call his surgeon tonight. You don't want to mess around with this, people can get very sick, very fast. Don't know what the nose bleed has to do with it, but tell him to go in. Thats way too much pain for this many days post op.

He should call the surgeon that performed the procedure. Many surgeons have 24-hr answering service from which they can be paged if you call the office number after-hours.

This is not normal at all for this type of procedure. He should go the ER immediatley or contact his healthcare provider ASAP! Definately has some infection going on and there should not be that degree of pain.