On August 15, I evicted my gallbladder. It was time for it to go; it was causing me issues with digesting food, which meant stomach issues, food restrictions etc. I didn't want to live like that the rest of my life - and risk my gallbladder actually going bad and making things a lot worse - so I listened to my body, saw the doc and got it handled.
All this started during Memorial Day weekend. I've always had a pretty iron stomach - I can eat just about anything. If I eat too much, it can make me sick, but whatever. Doesn't happen often. Over Memorial Day weekend, my mom BBQed, and I overindulged a little. This time though, I got pretty sick - like, I missed 1.5 days of work because I was so sick. Fever, stomach issues, nausea...I'd never experienced that before after having a big meal. But, I got over it and shook it off.
The same thing happened two weeks later. And during the 4th of July weekend. And two weeks after that. Every time I ate something particularly fatty, I would get really sick. I knew that wasn't normal, so I dragged my reluctant behind to the doctor. He immediately suspected my gallbladder and had me get an ultrasound to check for stones. That came back clear, so I had a HIDA scan done - a dye was injected into my system to see how fast it would move from my liver to my gallbladder. The dye was going to act like bile and show if I had an issue with the bile moving the way it should, which could explain why I wasn't digesting food properly and getting sick.
The HIDA scan was OK...sitting still for 1.5 hours was hard...but the part where the dye was forced from my liver to my gallbladder sucked. It felt like someone had set my stomach on fire...I'm not sure how I stayed still for the 15 minutes it took for the dye to do its thing. The scan results came back showing I was having issues moving bile from the liver to the gallbladder, so I scheduled surgery to kick it out.
The morning of my surgery was an early one. I was supposed to have surgery at 10am, but it got bumped up to 7am, so I was at the hospital by 6am [basically, I didn't sleep the night before]. I got all checked in, talked to my OR nurse/surgeon/ER nurse/anesthesiologist, then waited an hour until they wheeled me back. The surgery itself only took an hour, but coming out of anesthesia was rough for me. I was very sleepy, very nauseous, and I was in post-op for three hours while I struggled to shake it off. I pretty much slept the next 1.5 days away.
The surgery involved using tools in four incision points to remove my gallbladder. This is what it looked like the day after surgery:
The fourth incision was right above my belly button. Those four incision points hurt up until last week. And I mean, HURT. It was hard to sneeze, hard to laugh, hard to breathe...I tend to not take pain meds because I don't like the way they make me feel, but I took Lortab for two days to help curb the pain. It wound up making me feel very nauseous though, so I stopped taking it and sucked it up through my trip to Vegas. Oh, I should mention I had surgery on August 15 and flew to Vegas August 18...I will NEVER do that again. But anyway.
Now that I'm 2.5 weeks post-op, I feel SO much better. The incisions don't hurt, the sites are healing well, I shouldn't have a ton of scarring, and I can eat whatever I want now. I do watch how much fat I eat - if I eat too much of it [like bacon], it makes me nauseous - but it's nice to not have to worry whether what I eat will set it off and keep me in bed all day. I thought recovery would take much longer, and to be quite honest, if I wasn't in the mindset of "I have to feel better now, I'm flying to Vegas this week," recovery might've taken longer. But, it only took about a week tops for me to feel just about back to normal, which isn't bad.
The good thing about all this though:
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