Gallbladder

[birdy]

thank you to evveryone for this great board. I have learned a lot reading here. i am a female aged 57 and have been gltuen free for 3 years. i have an enlarged gallbladder that seems to swell up and hurts a lot. my husband made grilled steak today and i got the usual swollen feeling with the gallbladder and a dull ache yo almost a pain. this is happening more and more often at least two or three times a week. I eat plain foods, and stay with a SCD way of eating. i have not had my doc run tests yet. has anyone that is gluten free had there gallbladder out? how long did it take you to recover? do you have problems with diarrhea now? did you gain a lot of weight? doyou feel better now? how long did you have to stay in the hospital? did the hospital food work for you? i am so worried about having surgery

[debmidge]

thank you to evveryone for this great board. I have learned a lot reading here. i am a female aged 57 and have been gltuen free for 3 years. i have an enlarged gallbladder that seems to swell up and hurts a lot. my husband made grilled steak today and i got the usual swollen feeling with the gallbladder and a dull ache yo almost a pain. this is happening more and more often at least two or three times a week. I eat plain foods, and stay with a SCD way of eating. i have not had my doc run tests yet. has anyone that is gluten free had there gallbladder out? how long did it take you to recover? do you have problems with diarrhea now? did you gain a lot of weight? doyou feel better now? how long did you have to stay in the hospital? did the hospita l food work for you? i am so worried about having surgery

Dear Birdy:

I was 50 when I had my surgery last year.

I do not have celiac but had my gallbladder out last Aug 07

I had enlarged gallbladder (disease - not stones) and was in pain; then the dull pain

became more often and it was tender near my right ribcage. Fatty foods made me feel

worse. As my gallbladder got worse, my diarrhea got worse. HIDA scan was run and they

saw small stones in gallbladder and I did have some gallbladder attacks (gas running left to

right around chest).

I was feeling sickish for months before - thinking it was stress from work/life. One day

a diarrhea started and went on for weeks. I lost 17 lbs. from being sick from gall bladder

as the further along I got, the sicker I got and I was nauseas to the point that the

smell of food made me sick. I was living on Immodium

I had gallbladder out - same day laproscopic surgery and it went great. I was

home in about 5 hours!

However diarrhea still plagued me for months after ward.

Gastro ordered this powered prescription to

help me: Questran and I took that along with Immodium. Eventually I didn't need the

Immodium any longer and then further along I didn't need the Questran.

I occasionally get diarrhea and had a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with IBS. I

get diarrhea when I eat too much fat now. I regained the weight and feel better.

It took over 6 months to feel better. Sometimes I still have upper chest gas like I

had with gallbladder. But the biopsy of gallbladder stated my gallbladder was diseased.

This is a serious disease as it could go "infectious" and an infection can go throughout

your whole body and could threaten your life (like appendicitis) - you can die from

this infection. Also in 1% of cases, gallbladder could have cancer (this is very rare and

often is because you already have cancer which spread to gallbladder).

I did not have any complications of gallbladder surgery

[birdy]

i think that it is odd that your husband was misdiagnosed with IBS but your diagnosis is IBS and you are not gluten-free. I wanted to know how people reacted to surgery that were gluten free. There are other places to post about gallbladder disease but the people on them are not gluten-free. thank you for your story and the information but i had hoped to hear from someone that was gluten-free. but since my post was moved here i do not think that i am going to get any responces from the gluten-free people. i think that if you had gallbladder disease and IBS that you have celiac.

[debmidge]

i think that it is odd that your husband was misdiagnosed with IBS but your diagnosis is IBS and you are not gluten-free. I wanted to know how people reacted to surgery that were gluten free. There are other places to post about gallbladder disease but the people on them are not gluten-free. thank you for your story and the information but i had hoped to hear from someone that was gluten-free. but since my post was moved here i do not think that i am going to get any responces from the gluten-free people. i think that if you had gallbladder disease and IBS that you have celiac.

You'll get responses from people with celiac who have had gallbladder problems, I know they exist because I've posted with them on this same board last summer/fall and from what I can recall, their stories aren't much different from mine........it'll just take some more time before you hear from them.

Be well.

D.

[jparsick84]

I have had my gallbladder out. I was 19 when I started having chest pains, and thankfully my dr. remembered that they can sometimes be linked to having gallstones. It is a laproscopic procedure, which means they just make some tiny cuts in your stomach and use small cameras and teeny clippers to cut it out. It is also just a day procedure - I left the hospital the same day. Be sure you have someone to help you out the first week, though - one of the cuts is through the three layers of muscle just below your breastbone, so you can't even get yourself up out of bed. (I remember my dad having to lift me like a little kid just to go to the bathroom). My stomach muscles were sore for quite a while, but I'm a slow healer so it may be different for you. I was lucky enough to have it done over Christmas break in college so I had almost a month to heal. It was a relief to not have to worry about having the pains anymore, and if your insurance will cover it, you should really go ahead and have it done since you don't really need your gallbladder anyway.

Of course, they think the anesthesia they used for the surgery is what triggered my Celiac disease...Lucky me, eh?

[Phyllis28]

I had my gallbladder removed in Aug. 07, 29 years after being diagnosed with Celiac. I was back to work in a week because I am able to work from home when needed. If I had not been able to work from home it would have been two weeks before I was able to return to work. I had two problems after the surgery, the Big "C" and a urinary tract infection. No major complications from the surgery. I was pretty sore the first couple of days.

I was in the hospital only one night. I brought the majority of my own food. I only had milk and whole fresh fruit from the hospital food service.

I feel a lot better without my gallbadder, which was full of small stones.

Hope you feel better soon.

[Ursa Major]

An awful lot of people with celiac disease have had their gallbladder out, many in their twenties. I think gallbladder disease is much more common and hits earlier in life a lot of the time with people with celiac disease.

I had my gallbladder out 15 years ago, when I was 40. I was not gluten-free then, as I didn't find out I am gluten intolerant until almost three years ago.

I think that maybe not many people have responded, because we have had this question several times already.

Here is a link to the result of a Google search of only this forum. It yielded ten pages! Have fun reading through all of those. Open Original Shared Link

[Generic]

I had mine out in January 08. I continued with college during that time. I also had it done via laperscopic. Unfortunately I continue to have horrible pain. About a month ago they took out a stone out of my bile duct. It was in there since December at least. I am still hopeful I will get better. No D or C for me.