Two and a half years without a gallbladder

https://tracydurnell.com/2026/09/16/two-and-a-half-years-without-a-gallbladder/

Comments

grizmaldiSep 26, 2026, 4:14 AM
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.
user_of_the_wekSep 26, 2026, 1:50 PM
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.

Btw. - worst pain ever. Allegedly worse than giving birth, although I don’t have a way to confirm.

EvanAndersonSep 26, 2026, 6:29 PM
> 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.

NBJackSep 26, 2026, 2:30 PM
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.

joinHNtheysaidSep 26, 2026, 5:16 PM
This is the only universe where you still make that comment.
NBJackSep 27, 2026, 5:31 PM
You may be exactly right about that. All the more reason for all of us to take care of ourselves.
earinoSep 26, 2026, 8:11 AM
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.
EvanAndersonSep 26, 2026, 8:34 AM
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.

forintiSep 26, 2026, 9:52 AM
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!).
EvanAndersonSep 26, 2026, 6:32 PM
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).
sambapaSep 26, 2026, 10:42 AM
From tests to production in 7 days I think
BoxOfRainSep 26, 2026, 10:51 AM
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.
joinHNtheysaidSep 26, 2026, 5:19 PM
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...

Who added that apple add making porno noises.. it will ruin the fjords.

tonyedgecombeSep 26, 2026, 4:22 PM
Sounds just like JavaScript.
Barrin92Sep 26, 2026, 3:46 AM
> 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.

lmpdevSep 26, 2026, 6:40 AM
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

aethersonSep 26, 2026, 4:34 AM
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.
__mSep 24, 2026, 1:54 PM
What would be the sypmtoms? I each pretty much everything, didn't change my diet and don't take any medicine.
yodonSep 26, 2026, 3:38 AM
> 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.

Aaargh20318Sep 26, 2026, 8:06 AM
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.

ehntoSep 26, 2026, 6:17 AM
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.

robbiepSep 26, 2026, 7:12 AM
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)

CordialiSep 26, 2026, 7:03 AM
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?!'
nonamesleftSep 26, 2026, 7:52 AM
~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.)

EvanAndersonSep 26, 2026, 8:02 AM
Yikes. I thought my 6 hour attack was bad. I can't imagine 18!
pfogainSep 26, 2026, 5:12 AM
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.
SuppaflySep 26, 2026, 3:35 AM
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.
saghmSep 26, 2026, 4:16 AM
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.
nonamesleftSep 26, 2026, 8:42 AM
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.

SuppaflySep 27, 2026, 5:16 AM
honestly, it's probably worth frequent bathroom visits if you don't get the gallbladder attacks.
jdshafferSep 26, 2026, 5:59 AM
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.

LammySep 26, 2026, 4:22 AM
If you're talking about post-cholecystectomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yDkkeIMrBk
nioradSep 26, 2026, 6:05 AM
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.
alexpatinSep 26, 2026, 5:55 AM
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.
comrade1234Sep 26, 2026, 3:37 AM
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.
jjthebluntSep 26, 2026, 4:23 AM
Gall bladder stores bile, which continues trickling down the common bile duct whether a storage facility sits off to the side ready to dump a bolus into the common bile duct. . With no bladder storing a bile bolus fatty foods might not be adequately digested from the trickle.
M95DSep 26, 2026, 5:50 AM
No such thing as gall enzymes and no such thing as an enzyme derived from cholesterol.