March 21, 2022
I woke up to the most excruciating pain ensconced firmly in the upper-right side of the abdomen, manoeuvring mercilessly to the centre below the breastbone. Could be an acid reflux?? Or the pestering costochondritis! Whatever it was I was never born with the gene-code of a hubris doctor to be appreciative of my diagnostic skills. As savage it was, the pain made way to the upper back sliding incoherently to the right shoulder blade pulsating hard on the right arm. Phew!! A peripatetic traveller seems to me!
The flashes horrified me—“you have been diagnosed with some cancerlympho”…hard to pronounce though or was I even speaking the correct ailment. A symbolic overdramatic pursuance of being positive stroked my not so thumping nerves. I was at last abandoned by the pain as an electric current washes the sky leaving no traces of it. To my chagrin, the pain horrifically pummelled after every meal beckoning to hard press the crumbling spot of pain.
Gall bladder! Gallstones! Obstruction! Stones inside my body! The words pinched my ear as if I had been saddled below a burning matchstick. I was carrying a diseased Gallbladder with mutilated stones floating on a bed of bile, insinuating a coarse inflammation to cause periodical contretemps.
“Removing the fragile organ would do no harm, relieve you of the pain and life will be normal,” the doctor said affirmatively. Plausibly adding, “Cholecystectomy is a minor surgery to remove the Gallbladder.” Inundated by the gallimaufry of gallstones inside the Gallbladder, the pain needed solace and so did by body.Bemused and mortified, I pontificated on the capriciousness of the human body and its hegemony intact to exfoliate what seems tarnished.
Millions of people go through Gallbladder surgery and lead a normal life thereafter. But there are many who discordantly feel the paranoia of lingering symptoms after the surgery. Gallbladder is a small pear-shaped organ under the liver which acts as a storage tank for the bile produced by the latter. A LFT (Liver Function test) is not a primary recommendation to assess the health of the Gallbladder. Stones, for years, can find a sheltering carapsse inside the pear-shaped organ without any inclination to become a free-spirited entity. Getting clogged in the bile duct can only be there impunity from captivity to finally recede back to the indissoluble refuge.
I have asked this question punctiliously, scorning tirelessly at the fragility of an organ that induces no action of its own—“why the nonchalance of it is rebuked by a torrential wave of cholesterol unable to be dissolved by the bile, brandishing the excess of it to turn into stones.”
I am not fat but yes! I am a female of forty, fertile and fair. Even 3 or 4 of these F’s would put me at radar to have a predisposition to Gallstones. The female hormone, oestrogen, tends to increase biliary cholesterol secretion during reproductive age. But, how many of us have ever been educated about it or have been whispered the same after delivering a baby? All we are informed about is to take care of the new born while something furtively invades the working mechanism of our body. Hormonal changes during pregnancy and thereafter increase the susceptibility to Gallstones.
The ubiquitous analogy that prevails in the medical field is the presence of hormone Cholecystokinin that stimulates the Gall bladder to contract. Its incompetence to do the same eludes the bile to flow coherently into the small intestines. “Why” and “How” are still the pre-dominant flair-ups but seems better to put them at rest as theories can never be conclusive. Nevertheless, Gallstones are a reality egregious enough to enfeeble the body with stimulating pain.
How many of us are anemic? Millions today suffer from iron-deficiency anemia and toil less to do something about it. Crash-diets and excessive physical orientation without proper nutrition causes depleted iron reserves. Have we ever tried to correlate anemia to formation of gallstones? As antagonizing it may seem, anemia is responsible for these tiny pebbles to curse the do-gooder gallbladder.
We may gradually find new theories being promulgated to address the formation of gallstones but our own manifestations to improper lifestyle and sedentary habits should be the first carpet to fit the corner stone. Gallbladder may not be important for its plausible action but is prudent for retention of saturated bile to flow passively. A body without a Gallbladder may be in a workable condition but loses it motility to work, as digression was never God’s intervention. Let’s save our Gallbladder – it was poised for a reason….