Operation: Gallbladder Removal Bravo Charlie whatever…

Yesterday, I went for my first operation ever to get my gallbladder removed… but the story doesn’t start there, it starts all the way back at the start of October 2018, when I decided to stop eating junk food and drinking coca-cola. And when I say eating junk food and drinking coca-cola, I don’t mean a little, I mean beyond excess of everything just because I could and no one could stop me.

You’re probably thinking “good for you” and all that, but really, the big reason I decided to stop is because it was costing too much money that was better spent on more permanent things. Chocolate can only make you happy in the moment, an awesome 34″ ultrawide monitor can make you happy for a much longer time.

Regardless of the motivation, I lost weight quickly since I’m not a big guy by nature… in fact, I lost over 20kg in the space of three months before my weight stabilised. Yesterday, I got weighed and I’m now 68.5kg… so why am I talking about weight? Turns out, I lost so much weight so quickly that it aggravated my gallbladder…

In early February, I woke up in the middle of the night with a pain just under my rib cage. It wasn’t a bad pain, it was just strange, as if I had hunger pains and needed to eat. This was around 2am in the morning and as I’m trying to figure out what was wrong, the pains got progressively worse.

Before I knew it, it was already the morning and I had to call into work and tell them I couldn’t make it today and ended up going to the hospital instead because, well, it was bad… really bad. So bad that I started shaking uncontrollably.

The funny thing is that, while I was going through all of this all the way to the emergency room, I was more confused than anything else because this was the first time in my life that anything like this had ever happened to me. I didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t know what to expect or what to even do.

After an overnight stay, a few days off work and a couple of check ups a week later, it turns out I had pass a gallstone which explains why the pain was so bad… and had a small chance of killing me, hah.

And so, yesterday was the operation to have my gallbladder removed and all went well. I spent 24 hours not being able to see anything because I couldn’t wear my contact lenses, so all I could make out were blurry blobs that I assume were people.

Going into an anaesthetic induced sleep was interesting though… you’re looking around at the ceiling as they’re poking foreign objects into your body and can feel the sting as they go in, they put an oxygen mask over your head and then some other stuff happens that you can’t see and then… you’re awake and they’re asking you if you how you’re feeling.

It wasn’t like a record skip where all of a sudden everyone changes positions, it’s more like a moment when you don’t realise you’ve closed your eyes but then you open them and things are suddenly different from how they were before. It was pretty interesting.

After you do wake up, you’re too groggy to care about the particulars and really just go with the flow since you don’t really have a choice. I spent the night at the hospital and really just slept through most of the time I was there.

Thankfully, things seemed to have gone well and within 24 hours I’m back home and onto a computer haha. My stomach area is a little swollen from the operation and it does feel uncomfortable because of the small incisions that were made to get the gallbladder out, but over, no pain. Feels more like someone is pushing fingers into my stomach in various places really hard and it’s annoying.

One big thing was that the three other people I was sharing a ward with were elderly men and I realised… yup, this is the future, I’m sure. Even if I live a healthy life from no on, there’s no way I’m going to escape coming back here for something in the future once I’m old.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and die young lol. But either way, I’m down a gallbladder which means that things may or may not work out for me in terms of heavier/fattier foods. We’ll have to see since, apparently some people don’t see any difference in having their gallbladder removed while others do have to change their lifestyle because they can’t handle certain foods any more.

From weight loss to losing a gallbladder… where will life take me next?