Used sergers

Babylock is good, too. Price depends on the features you want...

-Irene

-------------- You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.=20

--Mae West=20

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Babylock is good, too. Price depends on the features you want...

-Irene

I always want all I can't get for the lowest amount I have to spend. ;-) AK in PA

Bernina or Husqvarna (but the 0905 onwards rather than earlier HV as they could be a pig to thread and a bit temperamental). Not an older brother, though I adore my brand new (bought in July) one.

Other than that, Toyota: I swear by them, too! :)

What you pay will depend on where you are and how old or well used they are, and the features. An almost brand new lay-in threading Toyota with differential feed cost a friend of mine about £110 on ebay this summer. My Toyota without diff went to another friend for £100 at about the same time.

If you get the chance for a gently used Bernina made in the last five year, jump with both feet! ;)

Well, I can tell it was a good decision to stay home from work today. I am very much off the beam. That last post of mine was supposed to read..."I always want all I *can* get for the lowest amout I have to spend". And I lost count of how many errors I've made in this post! Think I should go back to bed, AK in PA

"AK&DStrohl" scribbled while perusing news:457c2f72$0 $3330$ snipped-for-privacy@news.enter.net:

I bought a used Bernina on eBay and had it serviced. It was a total of $650 well spent as it was exactly what I wanted. It's not for everyone, but it worked out for me.

I have a three-thread Bernina I'd like to sell, but it also needs to be serviced (and servicing is usually $75-$200), so I haven't put it on eBay yet. One of these days.

With a good book and a nice glass of merlot...

;-)

Beverly

Not a merlot, no deep reds, too much tannin in it. Causes migraines. Non-alcoholic white zinfandel, I'm sitting here with a glass now. I take too many drugs for the fibromyalgia to drink alcohol. Good night, AK in PA

Rest well. I fully understand the whole red wine thing, my older DD suffers migraines, and has given up wine, cheese, caffeine, chocolate, and a whole bunch of other stuff. She still has migraines, just not quite as often.

Beverly

I don't take drugs for my fibro, but I don't do red wine either. Nor much other alcohol. That's the lack of gall bladder'd fault, though. :( They tried me on amytripteline (sp?) for the fibro, but the 'cure' was worse than the pain! Luckily I'm not too bad at present, but it's a right ole bugger when it flares up, so I sympathise deeply.

Ooooh, another person sans gallbladder...

I cannot drink alcohol either since the surgery.. It does not agree with me.

Do you get the painful burning about the size of your fist centered on your right side, just below the margin of your ribcage? (this is approximately where your gallbladder was). I get this, and it just about drives me spare.. My gastroenterologist told me it was most likely caused by inflammation of the bile duct..

Oh, it is wicked, just wicked.

There are some other lingering after-effects of the surgery, but they are not fit for polite company.. At least I do not have those terrible attacks anymore (for which I am most grateful).

me

If I'm being nosy just tell me to butt out. Why don't you take anything and how in the do you manage without?

AK in PA

(Kate)

I've never been told that I can't drink alcohol since the surgery. What were you told about alcohol post gallbladder? I drink non-alcoholic wine out of a faith viewpoint. Not because of my absent gallbladder status.

I know that if I have a lot of sugar or starches I have gas *big* time and not fit to be around. Some have told me they can't have fats. They get a nasty digestive system disfunction. That's as delicately as I can put it. I can have a moderate amount or I couldn't eat cheesecake on the Atkins diet and that's the only diet that works for me. I have to treat sugars and starches as if they were poison.

I get an uncomfortable,overly full feeling and some rumbling if I have too much fat but that is the extent of my symtoms. I had a friend who had hers out and she said that she always had a digestive system disfunction after she ate whatever passed for breakfast. Of course, all I ever saw her eat for breakfast was some sort of fatty pastry. Would that have changed if she at something healthier? I don't know. Peoples reaction to their gallbladder removal seem to vary widely.

Well, I have to get something for breakfast and then do some work around here. AK in PA

I was not told abstain from alcohol, but I found out after trying it a few times that it makes me deathly sick, (I never was a big drinker, but it never made me sick before the surgery)

I get inflammation of the bile duct since the surgery, and as I said, it feels like there is a burning fist in there, twisting around.. (This is really unpleasant, and makes me want to just lie down with a heating pad, and hide from the world.)

I also have chronic, bile induced watery stools. (there, I said it.).. This is a problem from the now steady stream of bile into the intestinal tract. I am on a bile-binding resin (which is actually an anti-cholesterol medication) to trap the bile and try and prevent the problem. It works *sometimes*, and costs a small fortune.

Intestinal gas and bloating: I used to love pop (soda), but now I hardly ever drink it, because it causes more trapped gas. I try to remember to take probiotics which *sometimes* help with the bloating and gas. I also have to limit the amount of yeast breads I eat.. I do not eat much refined sugar (as in sweets). I don't seem to have big problems with carbs (especially those that are not over-refined), although I do not gore myself on them. For example, I have better luck with a coarse rye bread than I do very refined white bread.

Fats: I used to have terrible problems with fats before the surgery (fats would cause terrible gallbladder attacks). Since the surgery, I am able to eat them without notable problems. Some people believe fats cause watery stools, but I don't know how you could tell, at least not with the bile problems I have. In any case, it is a rare day that I eat greasy foods anyway.. Too many years of not being able to, I guess...

me

Did your doc say why it becomes inflamed?

I'm sorry you have to go through this. I really don't like that there is no answer to chronic illness. No matter what the illness or cause. What is it about the gall bladder that one can't live with it and can't live without it?

I've realized too that the closer I eat to a 'natural' diet the happier my system is and the better I feel, generally and fibro wise as well.

I have a quote on my refrigerator door, don't remember who said it though. "Sugar and high carb foods are an addiction which must be broken." I'm trying to live by that. Don't always succeed, AK in PA

Oh, yes... I cannot process fats much, so anything fatty whizzes straight through, painfully! And I already has IBS before the gall bladder mania... :(

And a fibro flare can trigger an IBS flare, which triggers a lack-of-gall-bladder incident, which... Well, let's just say that occasionally I get grumpy! ;)

Some days it's a wonder I don't float away, I'm so full of gas!

The only thing I found that kicked the pain was the amytripteline, and I suffered from tremendous side effects, the worst of which were the nausea and dizzy spells, and the lack of brain! They do lessen eventually, but it took almost a month to get used to it. And it gets less effective over time, so you need to up the doze, so the side effects come back... And it destroys your liver if you take higher dozes for long periods, so you end up having liver function tests every six months. Ugh! After the initial series of attacks, I got used to the pain (which is annoying and tiring rather than agony most of the time - like having a tension headache rather than migraine! - and I hated the effects, so I stopped taking the drugs. If things get really bad I just take 1000mg of paracetamol 2-3 times a day for 2-3 days. I also did a pain management course a couple of years back, which help enormously. The last thing I have found a HUGE help is exercise! Nothing high impact, so no running or even jogging, no sports: just brisk walks and swimming! I usually swim 2-3 times a week for about an hour, but unfortunately since half term at the start of November I have been unwell due to other things, and haven't really swum much. The fibro is worse because of this. :( One last thing was losing the weight! I've shed 70 lbs or thereabouts: almost a third of my body weight! I was a UK size 22-24, and am back down to a size 10-12 in Marks & Spencer stuff. :) Bra size has gone down from 38F to 32DD! From this:

I was warned that about 10% of those who have the surgery find they cannot go back to a full eat anything in any quantitiy diet, and that some things may trigger side effects. The exact things that trigger them are different for different people. Unluckily I'm in the minority that copped the lot! So little alcohol, NO red wine, minimal red meat, low fat and low sugar everything (or just tiny amounts of the high-octane stuff!) and restricted coffee... Also no excessive meals - no pigging on an Indian take-away or Peking duck!

Everyhting goes through like rocket fuel - very painfully!

I have porridge or a banana sandwich...

Too many carbs make me sleep too much anyway. Ever notice that? better than a sleeping pill, carbs are.. I sympathize about your fibro.. I have some of the symptoms of fibro & lupus, and they keep vascillating as to what exactly I do have. Tests have been inconclusive so far (mumble, mumble)...

The doctor could not give me a direct answer on why I get inflammation very routinely off & on, but he did tell me that my gallbladder was actually diseased, unlike many that are just full of stones.. My gallbladder was essentially scar tissue from years of inflammation..

(nurse mode) Anatomy and Physiology: The gallbladder is a muscular pouch that hangs near the liver. The bile duct enters the gallbladder from the liver, and exits the gallbladder to the intestine. The purpose of the gallbladder is to store bile created by the liver, releasing it after eating into the intestine to help break down fats (bile aids digestion). So, in a healthy individual, the gallbladder is normally full of bile, and after the person eats, it squeezes, squirting bile into the intestine, and therby aiding digestion.

In people who have gall stones or "gravel", the stones or gravel can block the bile duct, and so the gallbladder squeezes, but bile is not released. This causes the pain of the ever-so dreaded gallbladder "attack". In people with inflammatory gallbladder disease, the pouch squeezes weakly because of scarring, and very little bile is released, agin causing pain of an attack. This squirting of bile form the gallbladder is called the "ejection factor". For example, our baseline "ejection factor" is 90-100% for a healthy gallbladder. My ejection factor was between 10 & 15% when the decision to remove was made.

(I was not a fun person to be around after eating before they finally removed that diseased tissue... I had 20 years of those horrid attacks.)

With gallbladder removal surgery, the gallbladder is simply bypassed, with the two ends of the bile duct connected to each other, and then the now disconnected gallbladder is simply removed. Without a storage device to store bile, the bile simply runs into the intestine as it is created by the liver, whether food is present there or not. This is what causes many of the symptoms we have after we have our gallbladders removed.

Normally, bile binds with fats in the intestine after a meal..

After gallbladder surgery, insufficient bile-on-demand after a meal high in fats allows the majority of fats to pass thru the intestine poorly processed, causing symptoms. Conversely, the steady stream of bile without fats to process passes thru the intestine unbound, and therefore in a liquid state, again causing symptoms.

Now, arent you glad you asked? (wry laughter)

me