Over a year ago I was diagnosed with gallstones after experiencing enough pain episodes which managed to convince me to visit my GP. Those of you who know me a little bit are aware of my “avoid doctors at all costs” philosophy and I know exactly what you are thinking: “them pain episodes must have been painful !” – my answer is f*ck yeah!
Anyway, an ultrasound and a phone call with the doc later I got the diagnosis and was presented with two options: surgery to have the gallbladder removed (colecistectomy) OR make some changes to your eating habits and live with it (aka eat low fat foods and I mean really low fat).
As you can imagine, the choice was easy at the time … go for the “low fat foods” version (because … well … I “love” doctors 🙂 ) which seemed to work well for a while with me having some small pain episodes here and there but (nothing too dramatic given a few tricks I picked up over the years (one can enjoy a bit of fat in their diet provided they throw in a bit of ox bile – in the form of pills obviously – and provided they don’t overdo it with the fat).
Everything was going well until last year in December when me and fam decided to enjoy a movie night with some home made pizza. That night I had the worst pain episode ever which lasted until next day afternoon at which point the pain dimmed down to about half the initial intensity and stayed with me for a few more days after that but at a lower intensity (about a quarter).
After things went back to normal (with me eating mostly rabbit food for about a week) I decided I need to be friends with the doc again and called up a specialist to book an appointment to check things out and maybe do something about it. As I suspected, my little friend (the gallstone who has been causing me so much pain – now named: Pietrica) decided to mess with my gallbladder some more until it got inflamed (the blood works my doctor requested revealed that bit to him) and together with the doc we decided to proceed with the surgery (official date Feb 13th 2023, scheduled somewhere at the start of Jan after the doc got a chance to go over the blood works and gave me his input on the situation).
In case you’re wondering how I got past Christmas and New Year’s I can tell you that I had my own food carefully prepared to be … you guessed it … really low in fat and to make the food taste better I kept thinking about the pain I experienced and how I don’t want to experience it again … pain is pretty rough teacher 🙂
Those few weeks before the planned surgery date were an experience … on one hand my mind was imagining all sorts of weird shit based on various random movies I saw years before combined with my genuine fear of doctors and medical procedures on the other hand I’m thinking I gotta overcome this for myself and my family not to mention I wanna throw more BBQs and enjoy some “singing meat”.
Finally, Feb 13th 2023 arrived so my wife drove me over to the hospital (Spire Thames Valley Hospital) and left me with the nurses who took me to my room and prepared me for my surgery (various forms needed filling in, water for hydration purposes, dressing up for the surgery, meeting the doc and anesthetist). Once preparations were complete I went over to the operating theater where the magic was about to happen and before I got the chance to realise what was about to happen I’m lying down breathing some “oxygen” and trying to keep my eyes open (the anesthetist instructed me to try 🙂 ) and then … I woke up in my room thinking: was this it? did it go well?
Yep, that was it and it went well (as the nurses and doc told me) with the added bonus of getting to keep my “friend” Pietrica only this time rather than inside my body causing pain he’s on my desk in a plastic container radiating joy (and possibly disgust to some people) as my one of a kind treasure 🙂
Note that I wrote this article a few days after the surgery and at this time I am still recovering (there’s a bit of pain caused by the cuts needed to perform the laparoscopy but nothing dramatic) however things are looking great as I’m starting to feel better and better every day.
Meet Pietrica … he’s a bit chubby, has a strange texture and he’s one of kind 🙂
PS. Pietrica makes more sense in Romanian (Petrica is an actual name, piatra is how you spell rock , pietricica is small rock and also the diminutive for piatra, the combo between these becomes a perfect name for my little friend there )