Referring to my experience with gallstones as a ‘journey’ may be slightly misleading. It might suggest that I spent the six months waiting for my cholecystectomy enjoying a carefree, exotic existence, during which I encountered nothing less than a frivolous whirlwind of joyful fun and frolics. It may surprise you to learn that those six months were, in fact, less full of joy and more full of shit.
It was the kind of journey you might liken to driving 5000 miles alone on a twisting, pothole-littered, empty road, encountering blood-thirsty bandits around every corner.
I hope I have conveyed to you how I feel about my gallstone journey.
I won’t bore you with the details. Actually, I lie. That’s exactly what I’ll do! We all love chatting about our own ailments, don’t we? This is my story, so if I want to bore you with the details I will. But I’ll be brief, because I feel like you’re already quite bored.
I had always been an advocate of healthy eating. That doesn’t necessarily mean I always ate healthily; it just means I advocated it. I love food. I have always loved food. And I’m English, so, let’s face it, my diet had consisted of many things that didn’t necessarily fit with my healthy-eating obsession. When I say obsession, I mean that in a very loose and general sense. It was more like a hobby; a part-time hobby; one that I would indulge every few weeks, perhaps. I’m rambling, like an out-of-control walking enthusiast who has lost their way on the moors.
To clarify: I was very good at knowing what I should be eating, and occasionally I did eat it. But mostly I ate things I knew I shouldn’t. So that’s got that little confession out of the way. It won’t surprise you to know that I had spent most of my adult life being ever so slightly chubby.
I’d actually put on around five kilos every 10 years since I’d hit my twenties. Before all this gallstone crap happened to me, I was on track to weigh around 250 kilos by the time I was 100. That may not be strictly accurate; I’m not great at maths. Plus it’s completely irrelevant as I probably won’t make it to that ripe old age anyway.
Anyway, on a warm August afternoon nearly two years ago, I was busy indulging my part-time healthy-eating hobby. I was at a beach picnic with my sister and her family, and I was munching my way through a chicken salad. The salad had an oily dressing, but it was olive oil. So, healthy! I may or may not have had some chocolate afterwards.
Around 20 minutes later, suddenly and without warning, a sharp pain ripped through my chest, rendering me speechless. I was gasping for breath. It didn’t last long, but it was scary, and it left a kind of lingering cramp in my chest that remained for the rest of the day. I put it down to indigestion, mainly because I wanted to swim in the sea and having a serious medical condition probably would have meant I couldn’t do that.
That night, I was awoken from a deep slumber by another stabbing chest pain, and this time I was terrified. I was sure it was a heart attack; it was that painful. And in the middle of the night, with nothing to distract me, it seemed a bit more serious than it had before. It lasted for eight hours.
That was my first visit to A&E.
After hours of scans, blood tests, probing, prodding and back-passage-administered pain relief, I was sent home with a note for my GP that read: ‘This woman is a pathetic wimp and/or a delusional hypochondriac.’ Or at least that’s what I deduced, as at a hastily arranged appointment with said GP, she concluded there was nothing wrong with me and sent me scurrying away without any suggestions as to what might have caused the eight-hour explosion of agony in my abdomen. Like it was normal. Or that I had imagined it.
Two weeks later, I went out for a lovely little lunch with my other sister. Once again, I chose a healthy option: tuna salad! How much healthier can you get? (Quite a lot, it turns out, if you have gallstones.) The salad was laden with good, healthy fats: olive oil dressing, almonds, walnuts and avocado. In retrospect, I was asking for it. I just didn’t know what I was asking for.
Full disclosure: I also had a Diet Cola. Look, I know this is bad; it’s actually akin to downing a litre and a half of cyanide, or so I read somewhere, but I was trying my best not to drink wine at 2:00 pm on a Friday afternoon. In my warped, uninformed little mind, Diet Cola was a healthy alternative.
Note: Diet Cola will not cause a gallstone attack because it has no fat content, but apparently all carbonated drinks are bad for gallbladder disease – notwithstanding the terrible things Diet Cola consists of.
Another note: I have not been able to face a Diet Cola drink since that fateful day, as the sight of that bubbling black temptress instantly conjures up images of the nightmare that was to transpire during the events that ensued.
The events ensued as follows: an hour after lunch, I was screaming in agony and bent double with chronic stomach pains. Shortly after that, I found myself writhing around on the floor with what can only be described as the stomach-ache from hell. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. And I had once given birth to a giant-headed, ten-pound baby with no pain relief.
I phoned The Husband. These were my exact (okay, slightly edited) and very loud words: ‘Get home now, and bring some Gaviscon with you!’ Hilariously, I thought I had indigestion. I am not sure if it is possible for indigestion to be that bad, but (for the sake of anyone who ever plans to eat anything ever again) I really hope not.
The Pain eventually subsided. When I say subsided, I mean it skulked off into a dark corner, where it sat rubbing its hands together, cackling a comically evil laugh, and plotting its next onslaught.
I didn’t have to wait long for The Pain to come creeping out of its hiding place. The Pain, you will notice, has by now taken on a life of its own, with its own name (I apologise for not being able to come up with something a little more original), and its own, sadistic, cruel personality.
This time, I was at an AA meeting.
‘Ah!’ you’re thinking, ‘this explains it! She’s only got herself to blame. Obviously, years of alcohol abuse have led her to this illness. Now she’s a reformed alcoholic and she is paying the price!’
But no, you’re wrong!
It’s my mother who is a reformed alcoholic, so there! I am not even close to being reformed.
Mum had asked if I would attend a meeting with her to learn about the AA programme and to show support. I reluctantly (because I felt not-quite-right, like I knew The Pain was preparing an imminent attack) went with her. The meeting was held in a large church hall and was packed. It was Friday night, prime time for AA meetings. The only seats we could find were at the front.
I really did not feel well, but I thought to myself, ‘It’s only an hour. I can do it.’
At 7:00 pm, the meeting started. Two people who were sitting at a table in front of us started speaking earnestly and passionately. One of them was crying. She was telling a story about how alcohol had almost killed her, and how AA had saved her. This stuff is gritty and real and is not to be taken lightly. The rest of the room was captivated and there was an awed silence. Except, of course, for the noises coming from my stomach – a kind of bubbling, gurgling, rumbling sound. And from my mouth – a muffled, embarrassed, moaning sound.
My mum shot me a sideways look of anger, which was quickly replaced by concern when she saw how pale I was. ‘Are you okay?’ she whispered… and a chorus of angry AA-ers hissed, ‘Shhhhh!’
The Pain started poking around inside my tummy; then it travelled into my shoulder, my side, my back – anywhere it could find a space to inhabit. I bent double on my chair.
‘Let’s go,’ Mum said. A loud tut came from behind us.
‘No,’ I said.
Leaving would have meant walking past a room of one hundred angry pairs of eyes; I didn’t want to move.
The person speaking in front of us stopped speaking, and with the tears still fresh on her cheeks, she simply stared at me. At that moment, The Pain made a push for glory.
It was too much for me to bear. I cried out, got up, and hastily ran to the back of the hall, with Mum following behind.
A roomful of people were left to conclude that I was having some kind of reaction to my first day of abstinence. Or I was just plain drunk.
‘I am not an alcoholic!’ I wanted to shout, but this would not have endeared these people to me, I realised.
Outside, in the grounds of the church, I collapsed onto the grass in absolute agony. To the Friday night after-work crowd who were streaming past, this did not look good.
The Husband was summoned again, and he came racing to my rescue like an untrained paramedic, all helpful questions like: ‘What have you eaten?’ and ‘Do you think you have appendicitis?’
I did think I had appendicitis, actually. It’s one of those diseases that we all know about; not like gallstones; who’s ever heard of that?
Again I found myself in A&E. This time, the triage nurse whisked me through the coveted double doors (where the doctors live) as soon as I got there. I have discovered that triage nurses don’t like it when patients are screaming in the waiting room.
After again being prodded, poked, scanned, X-rayed and relieved of most of my blood supply, I sat in a room with best-friend, Mia, beside me, waiting to receive the diagnosis. A doctor arrived, her face barely visible above the giant file she carried: the hastily compiled results of my tests. The doctor introduced herself, glanced at my file and then pronounced three little words I had not been expecting: ‘You’re not pregnant.’
‘Well, that’s a huge relief,’ I said, though I had no idea I’d even taken a pregnancy test. I realised that, due to the dramatic screaming and crying that had accompanied my arrival, they had concluded, quite naturally, that I was in labour.
The doctor went on to explain that lurking somewhere inside me was not a baby, but a collection of nasty little stones that were causing me the worst pain imaginable. ‘How could a few tiny stones cause so much pain?’ I wondered. (If you are wondering this too, all will be revealed later in the book.)
It would seem that when I took over my dad’s business, Brighton Stone, my body had taken it literally. ‘I know,’ said my gallbladder, the day I inherited it. ‘So she never forgets how lucky she is to own 17 tonnes of rocks, let’s give her a few piles of rocks inside her body as well.’1
It was all a bit of a shock, especially when the doctor calmly announced: ‘You’ll go on a waiting list to have your gallbladder removed, but until then you cannot eat anything that contains fat.’
I must have turned a deathly shade that matched the ashen hospital walls, as my brain skipped right past the bit about life without a gallbladder, and instead started furiously contemplating life without chocolate, roast dinners and chicken korma! What would weekends be without the comfort of a Friday night spag bol, or a Sunday morning full English?
I turned to Mia with tears in my eyes. I was in shock.
Mia calmly turned to the doctor and asked, ‘Can she still drink wine?’2
I am not a doctor; nor am I a dietitian or a chef. So what gives me the right to write a recipe book – or indeed any kind of book – advising you on what to eat if you have gallstones?
Simple. I am now a self-proclaimed expert on all things gallstone-related. I accept that when asked, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ as a youngster, I might not have replied, ‘I want to traverse the mysteries of the gallbladder; discovering the truth about gallstones and conquering the world they inhabit,’ but then I got gallstones.
I also admit that just a mere two years ago I didn’t know what a gallbladder or gallstone was. It turns out I’m a fast learner.
My desire to learn quickly came from a desire never again to experience the truly horrific pain of a gallstone attack. I feel like that pain has taught me so much. In a way, I should be thankful for it.
I searched, in vain, to find a cookbook that would give me a selection of zero-fat or low-fat, gallstone-friendly recipes to follow. There were none. So I set about creating my own. I slaved over a hot laptop as well as stove; I researched, concocted and experimented for almost six months so that you don’t have to.
Although I already understood healthy eating, I soon discovered that eating little or no fat is a whole different ballgame.
In my BG (before gallstones) days, I don’t think I ever gave a second – or even a first – thought to the amount of fat in anything. I would happily consume fish and chips washed down with a glass of full-fat milk,3 followed by apple pie and clotted cream, all within the space of an hour.4
Following the diagnosis, my diet was totally dictated by what would or wouldn’t cause an attack.
As someone who has never successfully followed a diet, I was forced to undergo ‘the gallbladder diet’, which produced results Weight Watchers could only dream of. The weight just dropped off me. I lost nine kilos in five months. I know what you’re thinking… Weight Watchers will probably be wanting my number.
Okay, if I’m honest the weight didn’t so much drop off me as drip slowly away; painfully, agonisingly, ridiculously slowly.
During the time I was waiting for my operation, I didn’t eat a single biscuit, cake, chocolate bar, egg or morsel of red meat. Not a single ounce of oil of any kind passed my lips. I consumed no nuts, butter or cream.
What I did do was make sure I was never hungry. I don’t deal well with hunger. It makes me feel angry and depressed and resentful; like I’m not really living my life as it should be lived. Which is mostly eating. So I spent a lot of time developing clever ways to eat that didn’t send me into toe-curling, foetal-position-inducing spasms.
I did lose weight, but I probably would have lost more had I not been so obsessed with food.
And I definitely would have lost more had Mia not asked that fateful question: ‘Can she still drink wine?’ In my deepest, darkest days, when I felt disgruntled with the world because I was a stone-infested loser whose diet and life were in turmoil, I found salvation in the fact that I could still indulge in some light alcoholic beverage consumption (which is, I believe, quite fattening).
In the interests of complete honesty, my name is Juliet, and I am …very partial to a glass of wine.
When I say that my diet and life were in turmoil, I am not exaggerating for dramatic effect. For starters (no longer an option for me!), I am an eater-outer. Eating in restaurants is one of my favourite things to do. Have I already mentioned how much I love food?
I sat through two adult-children’s birthdays, three house parties, a Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve – not to mention 22 weekends – without being able to eat ‘properly’. When I went to restaurants during this time, I had to embarrass my family and friends by taking the waiter or waitress aside to explain why I couldn’t eat their establishment’s perfectly good food. I then had to ask them to beg the chefs to make me something delicious using ingredients they didn’t have.
This would invariably end up with me drinking too much wine while jealously watching everyone else as they consumed beautiful dishes of flavourful deliciousness, which I coveted and they carelessly took for granted. Occasionally, the kitchen would produce a perfectly edible meal (actually this only happened once, in Canada), but mostly the food was – to put it mildly – bland. I have thus deduced, rather cleverly I feel, that kitchens must use a lot of oil and butter in their cooking.
At one pub, renowned for its burgers, the waitress looked at me as though I had lost my mind when I asked, ‘Is there anything on the menu that’s cooked without fat, oil or butter, but still tastes delicious?’ On that occasion, my dinner was a pile of carrot and celery sticks.
One kitchen refused point blank to make me anything at all on the grounds that they wouldn’t accept responsibility for my inevitable death after consuming their food. It’s highly unlikely that I will ever return to this restaurant.
So, you see, my diet is a sad reflection of my life in general: unusual and evoking pity wherever I go.
To really get you feeling sorry for me, I have to take you back to 2003.
Back then, I was living a perfectly nice life in my hometown of Brighton. I had a husband and two kids, aged four and 13. I owned a lovely little house in a trendy, up-and-coming area, and I worked a cushy part-time job as a legal secretary.
But no, that wasn’t good enough for me! It turns out I’m a needy, ungrateful princess who wants more. I must have more! (Which is probably why I have ended up with less… a lot less.) But I digress.
One evening, after too many G&Ts and a meeting with my accountant, I decided to sell everything and emigrate to Canada. That is the very simplified version. (You can read the full story in my next book.)
The bits I have left out are quite important though: mainly that my husband Eel5 had grown up in Canada, and had a whole life and family there that he had left behind to live with me.
So in March 2003 we found ourselves moving our family 5000 miles away to a suburb of Vancouver, where we built a new life. We bought a big, beautiful, brand new house, and we had a really nice suburban family thing going. I trained to become a real estate agent, The Husband started a successful stone-laying business, and the kids grew up healthily and happily.
But there was one problem: me. I was perpetually homesick. I spent a ridiculous amount of time and money flying back and forth between the two countries. I had never really been able to let go of my connection to Brighton and to my family there. This way of life caused two more problems: debt and indecision.
Fast-forward 12 years to 2015, and my family had found itself at a crossroads. Daughter, Irrek,6 then 25, who had always struggled with the pull of England, moved back to the UK. She found a good job and started building a new life for herself in Brighton. Our son, Mail,7 graduated from school in Canada and decided to go to university in England. My dad was seriously ill in England. Our debts were piling up. All this conspired to push us into a momentous decision: to move back to the UK. It felt like the time was right.
We sold our big, beautiful house in Canada and packed our lives away. The same day our house sale was completed in Canada, we had a flight booked to take The Husband, The Son, The Dog, The Cat, our six suitcases and me back to England. To nothing. We no longer owned a home. We no longer had a base. Our family instantly became untethered and fragmented. As I write this, I realise how crazy it all was. It was mad behaviour. For me, it was based primarily on an emotional pull to avoid any regret around not being there for my dad when he was dying. But the move was financial suicide.
We rented a place to live in Brighton and started to build yet another chapter of our lives. I took over my dad’s stone-selling business, Brighton Stone (as mentioned earlier), mainly because he wanted me to, but it was a mistake. I sell houses – and books, hopefully – not stones.
And then, one by one, my family members left me to return to Canada, starting with The Husband. We had kind of known that would happen, as his business, life and family were there; we just hadn’t really thought it through. We’re still together, but spend most of our time apart.
The Son, now aged 18, decided he didn’t want to study in England after all. He returned to Canada after four months.
And then The Daughter met a boy. Said boy was travelling to Australia and she persuaded him to stop off in Canada. She subsequently flew there to meet him and never came back.
I was left alone in England, committed to a business I knew nothing about. I was around when my dad died, and that was hugely important, but the major consequence of that series of decisions was an empty bank account. The truth is that it cost us several hundred thousand dollars.
But it’s not the money I mourn. It’s my family life. My husband and kids live on the other side of the world, while I live alone with my dog (the cat pissed off as soon as we got here; hopefully she’s not also trying to get back to Canada). I spend my time running a failing stone business, walking an ageing, resentful dog, and having operations. (This is the second I have had since returning to England. More of that in my third book. I am sure you cannot wait.)
The four of us fly way more than we should, especially me. I spend my life in a state of perpetual jetlag, for which I am working on a cure. Look, I need money, okay?
So I think we’re all caught up. Now you know how sad my life is and why you should: a) feel desperately sorry for me, and b) send me a few quid.
I actually had two days of surgery, because I am greedy like that – one is never enough for me! – though the first time around I managed to hang on to my gallbladder. It was a cold Monday morning in December and I had been instructed to arrive at the hospital at 7:00 am sharp. I have never been anywhere at 7:00 am sharp, and obviously the thought of it sent my body into sheer panic. I had returned from a Canada trip two weeks earlier especially for this surgery but, along with terrible jetlag, I picked up a nasty cold that stayed with me until the day I arrived at the hospital.
The Husband was flying in specially for the big day. We sound so bloody exotic, don’t we? His flight landed at 11:00 am, perfect timing to avoid the real drama of the day (me being somewhere by 7:00 am) and just in time to arrive at the hospital to find a gallbladder-free wife. The plan was for him to look after me post-surgery and run the business while I was in recovery. We sell Christmas trees and obviously, being early December, this was a fairly busy time for us.
My sister, Karen (I’m bored with cleverly disguising names), kindly volunteered to drive me to the hospital after I had calmly asked her: ‘How the hell am I going to get to the bloody hospital by 7:00 am?’ When she arrived to collect me from home, I was a snivelling, snotty mess. The cold I had been battling for two weeks was at its full-blown worst.
The admissions nurse took one look at me and demanded that I leave the hospital immediately and return only when I was no longer a threat to civilisation. Well, that’s what her eyes conveyed, anyway. What she actually said was: ‘You are not fit to have an operation.’ I wittily replied, ‘I didn’t know I had to be fit to have an operation. Seems like something of an oxymoron.’ And we laughed.
We didn’t laugh. I laughed.
Two things really upset me about this whole experience:
1) I had got somewhere at 7:00 am for no reason
2) I was clearly going to miss out on an opportunity for The Husband to tend to my every need for the following two weeks.
They gave me another surgery date in January. This time, The Husband had to stay in Canada for ‘work reasons’. I left him at the airport in Vancouver after a lovely (fat-free) family Christmas, and we both cried. I knew I was coming back to face a tough, painful, lonely month, and he knew he was a lucky bastard for not having to deal with it. I think his were tears of joy.
This time they gave me an afternoon slot. It was all so much nicer. When I say ‘nicer’, I mean it was nicer than, say, sitting in your accountant’s office waiting for an audit from the taxman. I spent a leisurely morning contemplating the day ahead. I couldn’t eat or drink, so I sat on my bed for three hours doing nothing, staring at nothing in particular, and wondering what I had done in my life to deserve this. Everything just seemed so wrong. I texted The Husband to say that this was the lowest point of my life. I felt it was important that he share my misery from 5000 miles away.
I should mention here that I know how lucky I am. I have very supportive family and great friends around me in England. I have a life in two countries; two families and two sets of friends. But it’s the division of my life that is so hard. The constant, gnawing feeling that something, or someone, is missing. In tough times, it just becomes a little harder to bear. And I have a tendency towards drama, hence the dramatic text to The Husband.
His reply? ‘Everything is temporary.’ Simple and blunt – some would say cold and heartless – but true.
I sat in the hospital waiting room alone, sadly clutching a plastic bag that contained my dressing gown and slippers. I was shaking uncontrollably. (Is there any other kind of shaking?) I contemplated feigning a cold, fainting, or just running for the exit. But I was brave, even though I would shortly be lying like a slab of meat on an operating table, my fate in the hands of someone whose nickname was probably the Butcher of Surrey, or the Gallbladder Snatcher.
A nurse walked me down to the operating theatre. We chatted as we walked, and to take my mind off the fact that I was about to be opened up and relieved of one of my organs, she asked me various questions. My favourite was: ‘What’s the first thing you’re going to eat after your surgery?’
I really liked this approach, which made me look at the positives of this mostly negative situation.
‘Probably everything!’ I replied truthfully. I had been having fantasies about cream cakes and chicken stew for weeks.
‘I told my husband the next time I saw him I’d be as fat as a house!’ I said. It was a throwaway comment; it wasn’t meant to illicit questions and subsequent tales of woe and abandonment.
‘What do you mean, when you see him next?’ she asked. ‘Where is he?’
I should have just said, ‘Afghanistan’. It would have been so much easier to explain. But instead, my surgery had to be delayed by three hours while I shared my convoluted marital situation with the nurse.
As she was leaving my bedside, the nurse referred to my state of affairs as ‘heart-wrenching’, and as soon as she left I started to cry. I suddenly felt very sad and alone.
This nurse had told me that, as well as being a nurse, she was a long-haul flight attendant and had three small children. I told her I admired her, and I do. I’m in awe of her. I would have liked to be her friend, despite her intrusive line of questioning, but there’s no way she has time for me in her life.
Shortly after this, my surgeon approached the bed and introduced himself. He was nice enough, but too casual, I thought, for someone who was soon to be intimately manhandling my insides. I wanted to know more about him, but I wasn’t given the chance to find out. He seemed reluctant to chit-chat and, unlike the nurse, didn’t even try to be my friend.
After that, I was wheeled into a room where I met my anaesthetist and her sidekick. I especially liked my anaesthetist, an older lady who saw how nervous I was and inspired confidence by saying things like: ‘In 30 years I have never killed anyone off!’
She also paid me a compliment as she was inserting something sharp into my vein. I’ll take a compliment wherever I can get one, but it was hard to appreciate this one as my teeth were chattering wildly and I was having terrible thoughts, mainly about death. I really do not enjoy surgery.
‘I noticed you’re 51. You really don’t look it,’ she said.
I sort of smiled and tried to convey my appreciation of positive age-related comments as I put my life in this woman’s hands.
She and the sidekick seemed to be having an argument about something as I drifted off to sleep. I wanted to stay awake to listen, but maybe it was best that I didn’t. I’ll never know now what they were quibbling about. Maybe he thought I looked older than 51. Rude!
And so eventually it was all over, and you will be relieved to learn that I survived. It was a miracle! My new friend the nurse had said something about gallbladder surgery being equivalent to a ‘beautician giving a pedicure’, which was weird and confusing, but I still wanted to be her friend.
I suppose her point was that it’s routine, and that recovery is not a big deal.
I think the nurse and I might have been heading for our first falling-out. Because it was a big deal. For me, anyway.
I personally know four people who have had the operation, and all four claim they were out of bed by day two after the op. One, a good friend, even said that she was back at work within a day of leaving the hospital, but I have since realised she is a pathological liar.
Here are a few observations and tips for how you might be feeling in the days that follow your surgery:
1) As soon as you wake up, your first thought will be, ‘I can eat food again!’ You will be desperate to savour the delights of anything containing fat, while marvelling at how pain-free you are. (However, in reality, you won’t want to eat much. In fact, you won’t be hungry for a few days. I nibbled on a biscuit as soon as it was offered to me because I felt obliged to do so after six months of biscuit-free living, and I was curious to see if I could even stomach such a fat-laden thing without any ill-effects. It didn’t taste good. But I hadn’t actually left the recovery room yet; it was probably too soon. And of course, you’re not really pain free. You are coming round from a general anaesthetic and are pumped full of beautiful painkillers. As soon as these wear off, you will know pain again; it’s just that it will no longer be caused by your gallbladder… unless of course the surgeon has forgotten to actually remove it.)
2) As soon as you get home, you will be tempted to jump on the scales. You are feeling certain at this point that doing so will make you feel smug, gorgeous and very, very thin. I made the mistake of doing this, expecting to have lost at least three kilos. After all, I hadn’t eaten for a whole day while I was otherwise busy having an operation, and on top of that I’d had a very heavy organ removed. (I knew it was heavy because it was full of stones!) Sadly, the scales reported that I had gained two kilos. I later learned (through some hasty Googling) that during the op they pump you full of gas, which stays in your body for a week and causes bloating, farting and extreme pain in your shoulder. So don’t get on the scales for at least a week. And don’t look in the mirror! You will resemble a pasty, swollen, giant pufferfish.
1) Don’t plan to go back to work any time soon. I had actually made plans to go to work four days after my op. In retrospect, I feel silly about this. I was still struggling to get out of bed at that point.
2) Expect some bruising. No one warned me about this, and I was shocked to see that my stomach looked as though it had done 10 rounds with Mohammed Ali.
3) Don’t assume (assuming you have had keyhole surgery) that your recovery will be any different from open surgery. I have no idea what the recovery from open surgery would be, as I had keyhole, but I do know I expected it to be a walk in the park. Keyhole surgery sounds so simple! A few tiny incisions here, a little squirt of gas there, a little tugging, and voila – one less organ to worry about! It wasn’t a walk in the park, and in fact I couldn’t walk in the park for two weeks.
4) Don’t encourage your 20-year-old son, who is 5000 miles away in Canada, to text you to say that he is seriously ill. As you lie in bed contemplating your life’s choices, your dire situation and the fact that you cannot get out of bed let alone get on a plane to go and comfort your sick son, your recovery will be probably delayed by several days. In retrospect, this was my lowest point. But it will probably be different for you. I hope so.
I recovered fully from the op after around six weeks – a little longer than I had expected, but to be honest, in the end I was just grateful that it was all over.
It took a little while longer for the mental anguish to disappear. (You may remember, I am a little dramatic.) But I do still feel a little strange; like I have something missing. I keep marvelling at how our bodies function, and that even when a surgeon removes part of them, they still continue to work.
In all honesty, I had briefly contemplated not having the surgery at all, for several reasons:
1) I’m a bit of a baby.
2) I read lots of advice online that recommended not having the surgery and suggesting that the gallstones can be treated naturally.
3) Treating the gallstones naturally involves trying to flush them out of your body. I found a cure that involved drinking a cocktail of lemon juice and olive oil (more on that later, you will be delighted to know). Olive oil was my biggest trigger and enemy, so I decided not to put myself through a self-induced attack.
4) See point 1.
I’m glad that I finally went through with it because the surgeon told me (after the op) that a large stone was blocking my bile duct. And I have no idea what that means, but it sounds bad and it makes me think that I made the right decision.
Living in fear of a gallstones attack is no fun. The worst example of this level of no-fun is when I flew business class between London and Vancouver (on a very cheap standby flight, I might add, in case you think I’m lying when I say I need money). To be seated on a plane for almost 10 hours while you are offered amazing, free food, and not to be able to accept it, is nothing less than torture.
Knowing that I will never again experience the hellish pain of an attack is worth the significantly less-hellish experience of an operation.
Although I will probably never again eat red meat, cheese or high-fat meals, I pretty much can eat a ‘normal’ diet again, which is great but also terrifying. I don’t want to put those hard-lost nine kilos back on. My plan is to eat a similar diet to the one I have trained myself to live on over the past six months, with two differences:
1) I will add some healthy fats: olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocado etc.
2) When I eat out, I will eat more – a lot more – than raw vegetables.
So, happily, I can report that my diet is no longer in turmoil.
As for my life, well that’s another story.
I’m not joking. That is actually another story. Available soon on Amazon.
1 This sentence will not make any sense to you, but it will be explained later. Bear with me.
2 The doctor smiled knowingly and said, ‘Yes.’ Silver linings and all that.
3 That’s a lie. I haven’t consumed a glass of milk with a meal since I was seven years old.
4 I’m no doctor, as I’ve already mentioned, but I’m beginning to wonder if this kind of eating behaviour might possibly explain my subsequent medical condition.
5 I have cleverly disguised my family members’ names as they have expressed a desire not to be publicly gossiped about within these pages.
6 & 7 Once again, I have cleverly disguised my family members’ names as they have expressed a desire not to be publicly gossiped about within these pages.