So my gall stone is coming out along with my gall bladder in a couple of weeks. (Anatomy lesson time) Basically your liver makes bile that is stored in the gall bladder. When you eat fatty food your body tells your gall bladder 'hey send me some bile to break down this food'. The gall bladder releases the bile and sends it into your intestine to help digest the food. When you have a gall stone that is in the way, when the gall bladder releases the bile, the stone causes it to spasm, which makes for all sorts of icky pain and other nasty sensations.When they do the surgery, they make four little holes to stick instruments and cameras and all sorts of crap to snip off the gall bladder and pull it out. Sometimes (10-15% of the time) they get in there and find that the gall bladder is hiding in a weird position, or can't get a good view of where to snip, or any other reason they can come up with and they change from four little bitty holes, to one big incision. Four little bitty holes means you go home the same day and take about a week to recover. One big incision means 3-5 days in the hospital and 3-5 weeks to recover. Guess which one I am rooting for???
The good news is once you have the surgery, you no longer can have gall bladder attacks (that is just soooo logical). The bad news is that there is no guarantee the pain in my side (that is basically there all the time like a side ache) will go away with the surgery.
Next week I go in for my preop crap. Conveniently it is not on the same day as any other appointments so I get to spend two quality half days at Lahey next week. One for my preop and one for my next liver MRI. I can't wait. The MRI is the pain in the butt test where you have to lie there and inhale and exhale on command - basically holding your breath for seemingly long periods of time. But that is next week. (Currently I only have 9 (count them NINE) appointments scheduled in the month of September. I did have ten but one was a preop consult we did on the phone. I am sure that number will increase after surgery because I will have follow up appointments.)
This week I get to just worry about normal stuff. What to do with the millions of tomatoes I have all of a sudden is a good thing to worry about. I might make sauce. Also, I have a lot of work to do these days. This morning I need to get off my butt and go out for a walk so I can come home and get to work.
1 comment:
on the bright side, I've had several relatives who had that gall bladders removed (both pre-laproscopy big incisions days and laproscopy days).
they are all still alive (twenty to thirty years plus), and taking the gall bladder out cleared up their problems.
it seems like one of those surgeries you can get good results (and hopefully, no big incision). You've been through enough in the last year, so it would be nice if you could have a surgery/medical treatment without two much drama. In the meantime, I'm gonna eat some fatty fried food for you, 'cause I know you can't.
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