This story can go in several directions but most of it is the bulk of an email (in quotation marks) I sent to my six siblings after my oldest brother posted that he had contracted covid:
Last year, shortly after getting the 2nd vaccine shot, I started having back/hip problems to the point where I was struggling to walk. I spent 5+ months in physical therapy. “Although I can’t prove that the ‘injury’ was from the vaccine, it was the only explanation I had.
I had no intention of getting the booster, because of my back, but UVa mandated it for all faculty, staff, and students. So, I got the booster on a Saturday afternoon and planned to lay low on Sunday, which I did. It wiped me out a bit, but my primary complaint would be the aching muscles at my hips/buttocks therefore supporting, in my opinion, my theory that the vaccine may have caused my back problems.
Before I continue, a little background for what happened next: I have suspected for some time that I have gallstones based on experiencing discomfort in my upper right abdomen after eating certain foods and large meals.
OK, back to the vaccine. So, about 36 hours after getting the booster, I was getting up after relieving myself and my entire body did this giant heave. It was as though my body inflated and deflated in a millisecond and was accompanied by a stabbing pain (10 out of 10) in my upper right abdomen followed by a flutter in the middle of my abdomen and what felt like a dumping of sludge into my gut. I liken the dumping to how it feels when you empty your sinuses when blowing your nose during a cold.
I was in major pain, but not keeled over, for a few minutes and then the pain slowly subsided to a level 1 for the next few days. I also couldn’t shake what I can only describe as caffeine jitters for a week. I did have a bit of a meltdown when I went to the doctor to make sure I was alright, and they gave me an EKG to make sure I didn’t have a heart attack. Thankfully, I did not. They also did metabolic panel testing for any other possible organ damage and blood test to check for infection. Everything came back normal. Hey, I’m normal! A few weeks later, I had an ultrasound and as I would have predicted, because I felt my gallbladder had been purged, there are no gallstones. Liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and bile ducts are all fine.
I’d say the actual event has been the most frightening health scare of my life and I’ve had a few meltdowns in the past couple of weeks…fear of the unknown. I am dealing with some pretty major acid reflux which is slowly improving. On the plus side, I had major loss of appetite (also improving) and have lost 6 lbs. In fact, the day after the event, I’d say my belly was noticeably flatter and bending down has been noticeably easier (hard to explain).”
OK so, what does this all have to do with walnuts? Rewind to the day of the actual purging event. Of course, I started looking online for information about what was possibly going on. There’s a hell of a lot of information on what happens after you have your gallbladder removed but not a lot on what happens after you pass a gallstone and absolutely nothing on the purging of a gallbladder’s contents. What I did find out is that gallstones pass through the bile duct into the small intestine and out of the body through your stools. So, the next day I investigated my stools. I got a twist tie out and started picking away and did observe some matter that looked like the pictures of gallstones. I was even more convinced that they were gallstones because, FYI, gallstones float, and what I was finding was as they dislodged from the stool, they did indeed float. Unfortunately, I could not confirm that they were gallstones because the day before this all happened, I ate walnuts. So, as I was picking through my stools, I had to question whether what I was seeing could actually be walnuts.
As mentioned above, I had an extreme loss of appetite that took a few weeks to recover. I also was eating a bland diet. Once I got my appetite back, I did an experiment…I ate some walnuts. Based on my observations the next day…walnuts float! I’ve done this experiment 3 times (N=3) because any good scientist knows experiments need to be reproducible, and in this case they are.
Posted by Margaret Ryan
booster gallstone vaccine walnuts ODDITIES WHAT THE...?
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