• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Gallstones

Jimmy Mack

Jimmy Mack

Old Oak
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
1,093
Reaction score
0
Location
Leeds, West Yorkshire
I have two at approximately 1cm...They were an incidental finding Jan 2016 and have probably been there for some time.

I've recently been offered a Laparoscopic (keyhole) Cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal) by the NHS

At present I don't have much of an issue (touch wood ;) )...perhaps a very, minor slight ache in the gallbladder region from time-to-time...but not the labour style pain 'gallbladder attacks' I've read about. TBH had I not had the incidental finding I would be blissfully unaware.

So I'm umm'ing and err'ing about having it out...If I leave it in and should a stone get trapped in the bile duct I could be looking at Acute Pancratitus or Cholecystitis...both quite serious open surgery fixes and potentially life threatening :o

Like you do ...I turned to my friend Google, now I know I should stick to the reputable sites with clinical evidence (the NHS for example), however you're only a few clicks away form death and it wasn't long before I was reading lots of tales regarding bad PO (post op) experiences where folk have had to really change their diets (permanently) to a very strict (bland) diet with some quite simple foods causing sickness and toilet issues and having half a beer or glass of wine leads to sickness.

I know these are likely to be a the minority, as it's very safe and common procedure and success stories don't often get posted on forums- where patients just crack on with life. But it does make me wonder if I will be one. :eusa-think:

My instinct tells me to defer as I have no immediate issues (pain), why introduce the possibilities of dietary and toilet problems or worse case scenario ...bile duct injury in surgery? The surgeon said even though duct injury is a low risk (1 in 300), if it happens , it'll take 10 years off me! Woah! (my jaw hit the floor) But then the problems with leaving it in are a bit of a gamble too.

'...a rock and hard place' comes to mind.


So I thought as there's been a bit of chat on gastro health I was wondering if any of you chaps had any thoughts or experiences on the topic...living with gallstones/ having the gallbladder out and PO experience?

Jim
 
I experienced excruciating pain from my gall bladder and ended up in A&E four times. The only thing to take the pain away was intravenous morphine. Luckily I had private health cover through work and had a well regarded surgeon remove it for me via keyhole surgery in a private hospital. The surgeon told me that as well as having gall stones the gall bladder itself was infected. The operation went well and I haven't had any issues since. This was all done about three and a half years ago.
 
Woodster":3o9wr4hl said:
I experienced excruciating pain from my gall bladder and ended up in A&E four times. The only thing to take the pain away was intravenous morphine. Luckily I had private health cover through work and had a well regarded surgeon remove it for me via keyhole surgery in a private hospital. The surgeon told me that as well as having gall stones the gall bladder itself was infected. The operation went well and I haven't had any issues since. This was all done about three and a half years ago.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply, sounds like it was out just in the time!

Have you had to change your diet in anyway...anything you can't eat or drink that you could before?

Jim

Sent from my HTC 0P6B900 using Tapatalk
 
I don't recall that diet was even discussed at the time. I've certainly not modified my intake at all, I still enjoy a curry with a couple of bottles of Cobra! Best speak to the experts though.
 
Had the galbladder out yesterday, was suppose to be a day case, but it was a tricky, sticky bugger to remove and the surgeon nicked an artery...I heard it very nearly went from keyhole to open surgery. Got a good beating from the surgeon. It'll be steady away for a few weeks.

My view is nowhere near as cool as rod's [emoji3]

0aac1d633ce29465ad3c10a51cfee7c3.jpg


Sent from my HTC 0P6B900 using Tapatalk
 
Cheers chaps...wow... just had the drain removed, all 200mm of pipe pulled out...maybe 8mm dia ...that was fun. Hopefully home today, then back on the tools in the morning [emoji23] [emoji85]

I do have a Kandinsky to look out while I bounce about on pain relief.

f1893843336692d06c6b75209504234b.jpg


Sent from my HTC 0P6B900 using Tapatalk
 
All the best for a speedy recovery. Sounds like you had a narrow escape missing out on the open surgery.

How did they find them in the first place? X-ray of some other part of the body?

And curious to know what made you decide to opt for the op.
 
Hope all goes well matey - and follow advice re the rest period required. :D
 
RogerS":3lmy807k said:
All the best for a speedy recovery. Sounds like you had a narrow escape missing out on the open surgery.

How did they find them in the first place? X-ray of some other part of the body?

And curious to know what made you decide to opt for the op.
Click to expand...
Thanks Roger, I think I did have a narrow escape, the surgeon did have a good rummage, so feeling pretty beat upl...I've learnt not much seems to touch abdominal pain!

My main reasons for choosing removal were the potential risks related to the stones are life threatening (see OP).
I'd been having quiet a lot of dull aches in the region over the past couple of years.

Turns out that the OP visual inspection proved the gallbladder was having frequent (quiet) inflammations and the omentum apron which surrounds the organs and moves about to protect regions (like a little wall, this is my interpretation of what the surgeon said BTW) was all stuck to a sticky, sick galbladder. Removal was a smart (lucky) choice. If I'd had a CAT scan this would of come up, but for some reason I didn't. I only had the ultrasound. I also had some raised/ spiking liver emzyme ALTs results last year...which now points to a misbehaving GB dumping gunk into the liver. These early ALT results prompted an ultrasound on the liver and the galstones were an incidental finding.

In conclusion it was a tough decision to have it out, I read and talked to specialists a lot... but the OP from having it out has clearly proved 'better out than in' for me!

I now have to tentively relearn my diet, hopefully I'm like the majority and can 'return to a normal diet'. Whatever that is.


Jim

Sent from my HTC 0P6B900 using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top