kehorner

There are lots of posts on the digestive disorders board about gallstones and surgery, so you might want to head up there. Just a word of warning, though.... Keep in mind that the people that are posting post-op are generally those who are having problems (generally a minority of patients) and not those who have a problem-free recovery. So don't let negative stories scare you. Lots of people (including me) have had the surgery with an uneventful recovery and great results.

Okay, so about the scan.... Really nothing to be afraid of. Unless your are afraid of boredom. It can take 1-2 or more hours. They put in an IV line and have you lay on a skinny little table that slides into a big machine like a CT scanner (not claustrophobic, though... your head and feet are out in the open). Then they inject a tracer through the IV that gets picked up by the liver and put into bile. Then (in theory), the bile flows out of the liver and into the gallbladder and also some might go directly into the small intestine. You can see this on the computer screen, which is kind of fun. The tech can't tell you whether anything is wrong or not, but if you ask they will probably point out what you are looking at anatomically, at least. Then when your gallbladder is full of bile, they inject a synthetic version of the hormone that is released when you eat a fatty meal. This stimulates the gallbladder to contract and squeeze the bile into the small intestine. By measuring the amount of bile in the gallbladder before and after it squeezes, they can see how well it is squeezing. Note that typical functions are around 40% or higher. My recommendation is to bring your portable music player of choice. Or a book. Mine took 4 hours (there were issues with getting the bile to actually go into the gallbladder, because it was so full of stones...), and I got really sick of staring at the two posters on the ceiling! Over the course of my scan, the tracer completely left my liver and entirely moved into my intestines. So it's not like this stuff is going to be circulating in your blood for days. It gets pulled out and dumped into the intestines within hours and then makes its exit from there.

Most gallbladder surgery is done on an outpatient basis. Mine was scheduled for 1:30 pm. I showed up at the hospital at 11:30 to check in, get the pulse/temp/BP/weight taken, change into a gown... Then the nurse comes in to start the IV, the surgeon stops by to chat, the anesthetist stops by (and she gave me some meds for nausea because I felt kind of sick). The actual surgery only took 45 minutes, and I woke up in recovery around 3:30. The standard is four incisions... one in the middle just below your breastbone, one at your bellybutton, and two off to the right side around the level of the bellybutton. Mine were stitched and then sealed with this clear glue-stuff, so I didn't even have any bandages and I was allowed to shower without covering them or anything the next day. So then they got me sitting up and gave me juice and graham crackers and got the pain under control and sent me home. I was resting comfortably on my couch by 5. I took it really easy for several days, mostly just laying on the couch (except for the walks around the block to promote recovery). Most people recommend taking two weeks off from work. I'm a grad student, so I took 4 days completely off, 7 more days partially off. After the surgery you have to start off on a no/low fat diet or you'll get horrible diarrhea. I had some nausea and loose stools mostly in the first two weeks. I felt pretty well-healed by 2 weeks, and by 4 weeks I felt pretty much all better.

Hope that answers some of your questions.