Today’s doctors seem to have a short way with gall bladders. Mine was misbehaving; now it’s gone.
The doctor said that the consequences of its loss aren’t much. Go easy on fatty foods for a while was about the extent of his advice.
OTOH, a friend told me that a doctor he knows insists that there is a high chance of gaining weight. This seems to imply that you somehow become more efficient at digesting food – sounds improbable. Or maybe your appetite leads you astray.
Is there anything to this? Any other obscure consequences worth knowing about?
I had mine out a few years ago. The only thing I’ve noticed is that I have a slight tendency to … instestinal difficulties after eating large amounts of really fatty or spicy food.
Of course, anecdotal evidence is a contradiction in terms. YMMV.
Everyone I know (me included) who has had their gall bladders removed says “and the doctor said I could get back to a regular diet in two or three months.” And then we laugh.
Of course, that’s less than a dozen people and therefore not statistically significant. But I still haven’t found anyone who said “huh, and I was downing the guacamole at three months just like he said.”
I had mine out in '83. It’s just gotten back to nearly normal in the last few years. Other folks have said after five yeas it was nearly normal. Of course, a low-fat diet is good for you, so I try looking at it as a silver lining thing. During the worst of it, if I ate fatty food, I’d make sure I’d be near a bathroom for the next half hour to an hour, because the internal call to abandon ship could be counted on within that time.
I’ve never heard the story about gaining weight. Although skipping meals can be worse than eating fatty food, in its own way, so be ready to snack at odd times. You’ll know when. Snacking on the wrong things, to ease the discomfort, could put on the pounds. And it’s fatty foods that ease the discomfort quickest if you’ve gone too long without eating.
Carrot sticks worked for me. Not quite as immediately easing as ice cream but no rebound effect to deal with. I’ve heard that oatmeal binds to bile, but I can’t say I’ve experimented with it. \
Hope your mileage varies. Even if it isn’t, dealing with the digestion was always better than dealing with the attacks before the surgery. Hope you’re all well soon.
Xema, my mom had hers removed several years ago, and for a long time had intestinal problems which were remedied by this oral suspension stuff (can’t remember the exact name). She tried changing her diet, which helped for a while, but then she had to go back to taking the powder stuff.
I had mine out almost ten years ago now and other than similar “intestinal difficulties” after a fatty meal that Smeghead noted I’ve had no serious consequences.
Here’s another thread about missing your gall bladder…
My doctors were never able to explain why my gall bladder went nuts (gallstones inflamed it and caused me extreme pain in the center of my chest), they just took it out laproscopically. The next day they gave me a few of the stones in a jar as a souvenir and told me to go out and live a normal life.
I believe bile salts can accumulate into ‘stones’ in the Galbladder. If one of these gets lodged in the gall duct, it can cause inflammation and extreme pain.
Why do they remove the whole thing? Well, because chances are if you develop gall stones, its something that will plague you for the rest of your life. At this point, its far simpler to just remove the whole thing. My mom had gallstones the size of marbles. A whole lot of them. Imagine trying to cram a marble through a tube the diameter of a pencil lead. Yeowch! :eek:
If you look for the thread about most painful experiences in your life, several posters mentioned gall bladder stones, includuing several women who rated it worse than child birth. Secondly getting stones there can if they get into your pancreas cause pancreatitis which is really bad (been there, done that, got the scars to prove it). After having your gall bladder removed, there is a tendancy to have problems digesting very fatty food. Myself though, I was eating just about anything within a few weeks of having the opperation to remove the gall bladder without problems, just avoid lard, duck and pig fat in large quantities.
In my case, it was a gallstone 22mm long (shaped pretty much like a flattened egg). This had apparently been there quite some time with no symptoms, but then it decided to move so as to block the duct.
This led to inflamation of the gall bladder – most unpleasant. I was not sorry to see the thing depart (they showed it to me as I was waking up from the anesthetic, and they let me keep the stone).
About ten years ago my wife had her first gall bladder attack. She has a tremendous fear of surgery and instead of having it removed went on a very low fat diet instead. At first she had trouble staying on the diet but every time she had another attack it would strengthen her resolve to stick to the diet. After several years she no longer had any gall bladder attacks and now is on merely a low fat diet rather than the strict diet she started on. Considering that most people have to limit their fat intake anyway after having their gall bladder removed I believe that too many gall bladders are being removed. Of course, if there is an infection or other complication there is no question it should be removed. Also, having your gall bladder removed doesn’t totally eliminate “gall bladder” attacks! Her mother had her gall bladder removed years ago but still sometimes has the same symptoms as a gall bladder attack after eating too much fat.
I’m not sure about the probability of a gall stone causing a pancreatic duct blockage, but gall bladder removal is very safe and very quick compared to getting over pancreatitis. I would think that even if it is only 1% risk it would be worth the surgery.
It is though possible to still get gall stones even if the gall bladder is removed, so a reduced fat diet is advisable afterwards.
B.T.W. losing a great deal of weight in a short time, can cause the cholesterol in your body fat to recirculate through your body, and accumulate in the Gall bladder as stones. So even someone with quite a low fat intake can get problems in such circumstances.
The above is compiled from information I gleaned from several doctors, after I suffered pancreatitis brought on by gall stones. The Pancreatitis meant 3 weeks in hospital, 1 weeks under intensive monitoring. The removal of the gall bladder was a short surgery and 2 days bed rest in hospital.
mrsIteki has gallstones, they want to take it all out. She doesn’t want to for fear of the situations mentioned above, and we have been very successful in managing her condition with diet. While researching the condition and the consequences of having her gall bladder removed, she found the following cheekily named article:
O’DONNELL, L J D (1999). Post-cholecystectomy diarrhoea: a running commentary.
Ok, so I have no point, I was just posting something that entertained me. Actually, she says it’s a good article, so maybe I did have a point.
I had mine out when I was 37. It had probably not been working properly since I was 30, but about five months before the operation, I nearly collapsed in a Mexican restaurant from pressure and pain. A sonogram of the gallbladder showed it clogged with cholestorol.
I’ve put on 20-30 pounds since the operation. I tried a vegetarian diet for about a year, but it didn’t make much difference.
34 years ago and an eleven inch scar to prove it. To this day, any fatty food starts my stomach rumbling . You can’t fool me by saying it’s ‘low fat’. My bowels will call you a liar.
Did anyone else have stones with corners? I swear mine looked like D&D dice - including the triangular one.
And now that Bippy has commented, I’ve heard someone say that their digestion went back to normal. I knew it had to work for someone. Looks like it’s five to one against for the thread, though.
I’ve never regretted having the surgery. The surgery hurt less than, say, one good attack. It was pre-laparoscopy, though, so there was a fairly long recovery time.
And you don’t need to get anything inflamed to be in pain during an attack. What happens is - the liver produces bile (aka gall) based loosely on what you’ve been eating lately. The bile is stored in the gall bladder. When fats are detected in your lower stomach, the gall bladder contracts and squirts an appropriate amount of bile into the food as it enters the intestines.
If the gall bladder squeezes down and it’s filled with stones, the result is pain. Since there are no nerve endings in the gall bladder, the pain is referred to other places. I experienced mine mostly as back pain. Took me awhile to figure out that I didn’t just have a wonky back.
I had mine out in 1991. It hasn’t really had a very big impact on my lifestyle, I guess. Except that I went vegetarian in 1995 and, further, I went vegan in 2000. That means I automatically get a low-fat diet. I’ve gotten used to being vegetarian and vegan, and actually prefer it this way. So I don’t have to even think about low-fat. It just comes with the territory. For snacks I prefer Clif Bar and the like, and organic apples.
Interesting about the tendency to gain weight for cholecystectomies. I hadn’t known about that. It would explain why it’s hard for me to keep my weight down, even though I don’t eat all that much. You always hear about vegans looking skinny and scrawny. Not me; I look well-fed. I’m not fat, but keep hovering 10-20 pounds above my ideal weight. So it was that loss of gallbladder that explains this mystery? Hmm…
As Bippy mentioned above, gallstones can lead to pancreatitis. What Bippy didn’t say was that pancreatitis is fatal, and it doesn’t take long to kill you.
My wife went through gall bladder removal this past May. She was diagnosed with pancreatitis. Upon that diagnosis, the doctors worked double-time to get her into surgery.
Now bordelond pancreatitis can be fatal, but the fatality level is low if you get to hospital. It can lead to very bad Diabetes as well as other complications if the pancreas does not fullt recover.
I am interested to hear that your doctor got the wife surgery as fast as possible. Do you mean surgery on the pancreas or on the gall bladder removal? (Email me if you like). My treatment was to be put on a drip with antibiotics, anti-fever regime, and lots of morphine, to give my pancreas time to heal. A couple of months later I was well enough to have the gall bladder removed.
P.S. I had had the “back pains” caused by gall stones for over three years, with lots of doctor visits, and spinal xrays etc. I was even offered spinal surgery to fuse together several vertibrae to stop the pain. All the time it was the gall stones. I worry that back doctors aren’t propperly aware of the effects of gall stones in creating back pain. I had the classic gall stone symptom of the pain often occuring half an hour after a big meal, and being localised in the central to upper back spreading arround the ribs. To give an idea, my gal stone attacks felt just like someone had placed a steal band arround my chest and then tightened it slowly with a very strong hydrolic system.
the whole male side of my family has had their’s out…grandfather, uncle, father, and two brothers. I’ve still got mine but I’ve had problems. I had a stone block a duct in my pancreas which resulted in pancreatitis…which can be fatal. It eventually dislodged itself and the pancreatitis went away but it is not a fun experience.
