Any Freepers who have had gall bladder surgery?

Feb 20, 2014 | Me

[taxcontrol]

I just did a 3 day stint in the hospital for Pancreatitis which may be caused by gall stones. The doctor recommends that I get my gall bladder and the gall stones removed. Considering that I have good insurance, I am going to go through the procedure.

[az wildkitten]

as a nurse for 35 years, if you have to have your GB out, you are living in the right time. When I began my career you could look forward to a week in ICU with tubes in most of your orifices, plus a few u didn’t know you had, a huge belly incision, lots of pain, and a good possibility of dying. Now, we send you home the same day. It is one of the great advances in surgery in my lifetime. I still have my GB, but don’t fear losing it like I used to.
I will give you the advice I give all the patients I send home, WALK, WALK,WALK. Drink plenty of water. Don’t get constipated. from the pain pills.

[combat_boots]

I had it done. The surgery was easy. I just have the ‘dumping’ syndrome after the fact/when I eat. I understand that’s not common.

Get up and walk afterwards. It’s not a ‘bad’ surgery at all. Tiny poke holes left is all right afterwards.

[The Great RJ]

Be sure to find a surgeon with lots of experience and who would do the procedure either laproscopically or with robotic surgery. Both procedures use only a couple of small incisions. My daughter just had large ovarian cysts removed with robotic surgery and had a quick recovery.

[45Auto]

I had mine out in 2007 after five months of very bad gall bladder attacks. For several years I had been taking antacids thinking it was heartburn. My internist ordered an ultrasound and that confirmed her diagnosis.

Went into the hospital four days later at 5 A. M. and was on my way home at 4:00 in the afternoon. I had no complications from the laparoscopy, but three weeks later I started feeling like I did before the surgery. Turned out that a single gall stone was stuck at the bottom of the biliary tube which dumps into the small intestine.

I had another outpatient procedure called an endoscopy (in which tiny surgical instruments attached to a tube are inserted through the mouth, wound down through the stomach and the offending gall stone removed with a tiny robotic clamp.) The recovery from the endoscopy took longer than the original laparoscopy.

However, the 35 pounds I lost in the five months leading up to the surgery have not returned and the only thing I have to be careful about is eating too much pasta.