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Two and a half years without a gallbladder

44 points · 37 comments · surprisetalk

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__m · 1790258079 · focus · HN ↗
What would be the sypmtoms? I each pretty much everything, didn't change my diet and don't take any medicine.
1. Suppafly · 1790393719 · focus · HN ↗
  As someone that's been putting the surgery off for years, from what I can tell most people have basically zero symptoms afterwards, and those that do still aren't overly bothered by them, but there is a small but real percentage of people that have lots of digestive problems afterwards.
  1. saghm · 1790396217 · focus · HN ↗
    My father used to have pain in his abdomen out of nowhere with a couple years in between, but they never could figure out what was wrong with him even during an extended hospital stay at one point. I think the earliest time I must have been in elementary school, but my first semester in college during the weekend where my parents were going to come down to visit for the first time, he had the recurring pain again that got so much worse than usual that he was jaundiced and my mother forced him to go to the hospital again (medical situations are basically the only circumstance where I've seen him get irritable), and it turned out that his gall bladder was completely full of stones that they said would have started spilling over into his liver and put that at risk as well if he delayed coming in for a few more hours. They removed his gall bladder, and he's never felt any symptoms in the decade since.
  2. nonamesleft · 1790412162 · focus · HN ↗
    Was worried it would be worse, all i get from it is that stuff with a lot of fats might cause more frequent visits to the bathroom (something one might not want to eat anyway all that often), before i could not eat a slice of pizza without an attack.
    YMMV, people are individuals.
    Suppafly · 1790486218 · focus · HN ↗
    honestly, it's probably worth frequent bathroom visits if you don't get the gallbladder attacks.
2. yodon · 1790393884 · focus · HN ↗
  > What would be the sypmtoms?
  Of an infected gallbladder?
  Don't worry - the pain is so incredibly intense, there is zero chance you'll not be aware of it, regardless of how high you think your pain tolerance is.
  1. pfogain · 1790399562 · focus · HN ↗
    It felt like I was in a ring with Floyd Mayweather and a nuclear bomb in my stomach going up and down. Think twice if you want to play out deciding on a removal or not. You might be back again in a few years.
  2. ehnto · 1790403427 · focus · HN ↗
    I read a neat trick someone had for the ambiguous "out of 10 where is the pain" question doctors give you. Find a reference point first: "If five is a broken leg, I am at a 7"
    Otherwise my 3 could be someone elses 7, as someone who has had chronic pain and a shifted pain tolerance it's proven pretty useful as even doctors struggle to convey what a worrisome level of pain would be without knowing what you have been through.
    Cordiali · 1790406225 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm on a waitlist for this. I went to hospital for an attack about six months ago, and I started overthinking this question afterwards. Wondering silly things like 'is the scale linear or logarithmic?!'
    robbiep · 1790406773 · focus · HN ↗
    As a doctor, that is a great way to report pain. Most of the time we’re asking for ballpark and trend reasons though. If I come and it’s a 3 first time, then a 5, then a 7, that’s good and I can do something about that. If it’s a 8-9 and the patient is in their phone, and it stays 8-9, well the absolute magnitude may be less of a concern to me.
    Regardless, if someone comes in and reports high pain I am going to administer strong painkillers (I work in emergency departments)
  3. nonamesleft · 1790409169 · focus · HN ↗
    ~18 hour gallbladder attack where i could not keep any liquids in made me consider bashing my head into the wall next to my bed until i pass out.
    (No longer have a gallbladder, thankfully.)
    EvanAnderson · 1790409773 · focus · HN ↗
    Yikes. I thought my 6 hour attack was bad. I can't imagine 18!
  4. Aaargh20318 · 1790409967 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s what my doctor said when I came in with a fever that wouldn’t go away. I had some mild discomfort in my side a few days before and based on the location I concluded it was my galbladder. By the time I got to the doctor the discomfort was gone but I still had a fever. He poked me in the side a few times, I didn’t feel a thing, and told me it couldn’t be my galbladder as I would be screaming out in pain if it was.
    I insisted it was, so he agreed to do a quick blood test for inflammation markers to easy my mind. Shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes for the nurse to get the results and send me home. 30 minutes later the doctor called me back into the office, apparently my values were off the chart and he already informed the hospital of my arrival.
    Spent a couple of hours in ER, where the infected galbladder was confirmed, and was eventually sent home with some antibiotics. Since I wasn’t in pain they preferred not to operate while it was inflamed. Then a year or so later they tried and failed to remove it, but that’s a whole other story.
3. Lammy · 1790396529 · focus · HN ↗
  If you're talking about post-cholecystectomy: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yDkkeIMrBk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yDkkeIMrBk
4. jdshaffer · 1790402342 · focus · HN ↗
  For me, it felt like I was being stabbed through the back, right below the right shoulder-blade. It was unbelievably painful. At first I thought it was bad heartburn, but then it just got stronger and stronger, until I thought I was going to throw up.
  Had my gallbladder taken out after that, and no more issues at all. I can eat whatever I want, thankfully.
5. metiscus · 1790405968 · focus · HN ↗
  Imagine a fist made out of needles under your ribcage violently pounding upwards toward your sternum and you'll get close. I've broken bones, have gout, and suffered dislocations due to combat sports and this was the most painful thing I ever experienced by an order of magnitude. I was passing out from the pain on my way to the hospital.
comrade1234 · 1790393823 · focus · HN ↗
I wonder if your bad cholesterol goes up in this case? This is because the liver uses cholesterol to create gall enzymes, which it excretes into the gall bladder with a bunch of left-over cholesterol too.
1. jjtheblunt · 1790396583 · focus · HN ↗
  Gall bladder stores bile which continues trickling down the common bile duct. With no bladder storing a bile bolus fatty foods might not be adequately digested from the trickle.
2. M95D · 1790401812 · focus · HN ↗
  No such thing as gall enzymes and no such thing as an enzyme derived from cholesterol.
Barrin92 · 1790394383 · focus · HN ↗
> I started some medications that suppress appetite in 2021 and lost 20+ pounds relatively quickly.
Assuming she's talking about GLP-1 drugs those do indeed have been associated with gallblader (and other gastrointestinal) inflammation and disease.
Not necessarily causative here obviously but still in my opinion irresponsible to use for weight loss that isn't medically urgent.
1. aetherson · 1790397285 · focus · HN ↗
  She's probably not? If she's gone two and a half years since her gallbladder was removed, and years before that when sge had gallstone symptoms but thought they were something else, that was before widespread use of GLPs.
2. lmpdev · 1790404836 · focus · HN ↗
  Anecdotal but my partner had her gallbladder out a few months ago (started to affect her pancreas —- was a bit worrying for the doctors)
  The doctors said gallstone formation can occur with rapid weight loss
  She was (and still is) on a GLP-1
  No symptoms post gallbladder removal
grizmaldi · 1790396091 · focus · HN ↗
I had my gallbladder removed as part of liver donation surgery over 20 years ago and have never had any digestive issues - and I eat everything.
1. user_of_the_wek · 1790430603 · focus · HN ↗
  Similar here, I had stones, they took it out, like 10 years ago. I don’t think about at all, I do have some digestive issues from time to time but I can’t even really correlate it to what I eat.
  1. NBJack · 1790433035 · focus · HN ↗
    Honestly felt like something trying to rip through my chest at one point. I don't recommend it.
    I was quite in touch with my God during my attempt to drive myself to the ER. Looking back, I was probably in danger of meeting Him had I driven for more than a few minutes. Grateful I wasn't far.
    joinHNtheysaid · 1790443017 · focus · HN ↗
    This is the only universe where you still make that comment.
    NBJack · 1790530262 · focus · HN ↗
    You may be exactly right about that. All the more reason for all of us to take care of ourselves.
  2. EvanAnderson · 1790447369 · focus · HN ↗
    > Btw. - worst pain ever. Allegedly worse than giving birth, although I don’t have a way to confirm.
    I haven't given birth, but I've had both gallstones and kidney stones. I'll easily take 100 gallstones to 1 kidney stone. I could think and speak while suffering with a gallstone. Kidney stones reduced me to an unthinking, quivering shambles.
alexpatin · 1790402143 · focus · HN ↗
if you are having pain in your abdomen, get it checked out. if you have gallstones, get the surgery. eating fatty foods after can be "consequential" to say the least. but it beats the pain.
niorad · 1790402750 · focus · HN ↗
Interesting! Mine got removed 10 Years ago, and I didn't notice any burping. The only thing I need to mind is to not eat anything too fatty as first meal of the day. Then I quickly need to find a bathroom. I'm definitely going to try the enzyme-pills.
EvanAnderson · 1790409257 · focus · HN ↗
My anecdata and long gallbladder sob-story:
My mother, mother-in-law, uncle, two sisters, and I haven't seen changes in our digestion (or other problems) as a result of cholecystectomy. I spoke to all of them extensively in the lead-up to my procedure in 2022. I was concerned about negative outcomes, though very little would likely have dissuaded me from getting the procedure.
For us, at least, there really haven't been any negative outcomes. I'm sorry to hear the author has issues. For me, the whole ordeal ended up being a positive experience.
I had my first gallstone "attack" in my early 20s. From then until my mid-30s I'd have an "attack" roughly once every eighteen months. They started with growing dull pain in my central upper abdomen directly below my sternum. The pain would plateau and remain for 2 to 3 hours before quickly fading. The fade was shockingly fast-- just a few minutes. Nearly all of my "attacks" were at night.
The pain was intense but dull-- nothing at all like the kidney stones I'd had in my early 20s thru mid-30s. I'll easily take 100 gallstones to 1 kidney stone. I could think and speak while suffering with a gallstone. Kidney stones reduced me to an unthinking, quivering shambles.
Other than recalling the difference in intensity and "sharpness" between gallstones and kidney stones I can't remember the pain well (aside: I'd argue being unable to vividly recall pain has been selected-for by evolution-- women who vividly recall childbirth are probably less likely to have multiple children).
I do have exceedingly vivid memories of the joy and relief of the pain subsiding. The expression "it feels so good when I stop hitting myself with a hammer" is absolutely true for me. Very little in life has felt better than pain receding.
My "attacks" mostly stopped in my mid-30s. I sort of forgot about them. In October 2022, a few months after my 45th birthday, I began having "attacks" every second or third night. A particularly bad one lasted over 6 hours. I radically decreased my food intake and saw a decrease in the frequency the "attacks". They continued and were disruptive enough to make me finally seek medical attention. (Being a typical American man I tend to avoid doctors for anything short of a severed limb-- and then only if I have trouble getting a tourniquet onto it.)
My GP wanted to explore acid reflux first and declined to order an ultrasound until we saw if an antacid relieved an attack. Fortunately (I guess) I demonstrated antacids having no efficacy in just a couple of days.
I pushed for an ultrasound on the basis of my symptoms' similarity to accounts from my mother and sisters. One sister had a multi-day hospitalization with acute pancreatitis and emergency cholecystectomy from her gallstones. She urged me to advocate for myself.
After the antacid proved ineffective my GP agreed to ordering an ultrasound. It revealed I had large gallstones. (The ultrasound technician told me "on the down low" that they were some of the largest he'd ever seen.)
I was able to have a laparoscopic cholecystectomy as an outpatient procedure a few weeks later. I had an excellent recovery. I was in bed for almost a week (though getting up and around was no problem-- just uncomfortable). I was lucky enough to experience sufficient pain relief using only OTC NSAIDs. I couldn't be more pleased with how the procedure turned out.
I do regret not being permitted to see or keep my stones. I got a photo w/ a ruler for reference (with the big stone being over 2cm in diameter), but I really wish I could have kept them. I told the surgeon I'd spent 45 years making them and thought I should be able to keep them. Policy, he said... >sigh<
I had weight loss prior to the procedure (around 20 pounds in two months) as a result of being afraid to eat. In the month following my procedure I was rarely hungry and continued to lose weight. When my appetite returned I decided to use the occasion of having already lost nearly 30 pounds to make significant lifestyle changes in hopes of continuing the weight loss.
I'd had obesity and hypertension diagnoses for over a decade. I'm happy to say I reached and have maintained a new weight roughly 60 pounds below my pre-procedure weight, attributable to changes in diet and moderately increased exercise. I'm still medicated for hypertension, but post-weight loss I pull much lower blood pressure readings. I was also able to discontinue one anti-hypertension prescription.
Al-in-all I wish I'd explored cholecystectomy earlier. More than that I wish I'd avoided weight gain in my 20s and 30s or, failing that, at least tried to lose weight earlier. I feel so much better, overall, than before the procedure and weight loss. I have fewer headaches, I don't get winded during daily activities, and I am actually able to get some enjoyment from physical exertion. I wish I hadn't waited until my mid-40s to get more in touch with my body.
Edit: Although I changed my diet significantly I do still eat a lot of the same foods I did before my procedure-- just less of them. I have a mostly vegan diet during the week (and eat a ton of cooked broccoli and occasional raw peanut butter-- two of the foods the author said were for them) and a more general diet on the weekends.
I've virtually eliminated refined sugar and bleached flour from my diet, aside from the very occasional treat of a baked good or ice cream. I don't worry too much about tracking macronutrients and just rely on eating a variety of foods. Caloric density is the main thing I worry about, and that drives me toward vegetables, fruits, and, when I have meat, mostly chicken.
earino · 1790410272 · focus · HN ↗
Ox bile supplementation was my biggest quality of life change after having my gall bladder removed. I unfortunately waited over a miserable decade before discovering it. I strongly encourage anyone who has had their gall bladder removed to look into this.
1. EvanAnderson · 1790411673 · focus · HN ↗
  What were your symptoms that made you seek out bile replacement?
  I don't eat a ton of fatty foods post-cholecystectomy but when I do indulge I can't say I have problems. I have some acute intestinal distress now and again, but it seems like that's just as likely to occur for me after a vegan dish as, say, a burger or pizza.
  1. earino · 1790711186 · focus · HN ↗
    Basically ibs. Incredibly unpleasant bathroom urgency is the way I would describe it.
forinti · 1790416335 · focus · HN ↗
My better half had pancreatitis because of gallbladder stones and so I learnt that there's a canal that goes from the gallbladder and through the pancreas. This is not a good design. Somebody should have thought harder about this. Maybe they had a deadline or something (I need this on my desk by Saturday!).
1. sambapa · 1790419375 · focus · HN ↗
  From tests to production in 7 days I think
  1. BoxOfRain · 1790419867 · focus · HN ↗
    With that kind of compressed work schedule, it's no surprise the software was pwned soon after it went live by a hacker of serpentine cunning.
  2. tonyedgecombe · 1790439752 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  3. joinHNtheysaid · 1790443171 · focus · HN ↗
    Move fast and intelligent design things. We will update and redesign it downstream. Or just make it smart. Give it a LLM and it repairs itself. God, im that good.. best sim designer this side of believable...
2. EvanAnderson · 1790447543 · focus · HN ↗
  It's definitely nothing to mess around with. I had gallstones and didn't take it seriously initially. One of my sisters had a multi-day hospitalization with acute pancreatitis and emergency cholecystectomy from her gallstones. She urged me to take my gallstones very seriously and, when my attacks got worse in my mid-40s encouraged me to advocate for myself to my GP (who was reluctant to order an ultrasound, preferring to try antacids first).

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