Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Slice. Dice. Very Nice.

I have made it through my surgery. With flying colors, thanks to your kind thoughts and generous prayers. Here it is Wednesday, the surgery four days behind me, and still a couple of weeks recuperation in front of me.

My gall bladder was, my doctors tell me, the worst they had seen recently and it began to break apart as they extracted it. I'm glad I didn't wait until January to have it out, as I was first tempted to do.

They also excised a chunk of scar tissue from a childhood surgery that they had first mistaken for a hernia. That left me with a five-stitch suture along with four other new holes in my torso.

Now, it's just rest, rebuilding my strength - which seems to abandon me after just a couple of hours - and adjusting my diet to make up for the lack of bile the gall bladder normally produces. My friend Larry sent me an article that explains what is going on with my body now.

Instead of concentrated bile excreted by the gall bladder after a meal, now I have a constant small trickle of the stuff produced by the liver. It can't keep up with the fat concentration in a normal diet, so that just turns to liquid and you get...well, let's just say you'd better NOT get far from a bathroom.

So it's low fat from here on out, or at least a couple of months until my body adjusts to this new way of digestion.

Yum. Sounds like fun. Man, getting old sucks.

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