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Gastro history

I had my gallbladder out in 2016 and everyone here says gallbladder like a warning

Started 6 May 2026 · 7 replies · 312 hearts · read 3.6k times

HeddaCopenhagen, DK · 6 May 2026
2 months ago

Copenhagen. Danish healthcare, Danish directness, and a slightly odd position to be in.

Mine came out nine years ago after two bad attacks and I have not thought about it since about 2017. Then I joined this site and discovered that the gallbladder is the thing everybody is nervous about, and there is a certain black humour in reading a dozen worried threads about an organ I do not have.

So this is partly a question and partly a report, for the group of us who have already had the surgery, because I could find almost nothing written for us.

The report. Fourteen months in. What I have had is looser and more urgent digestion than before, particularly after anything fatty, which was already mildly true after the surgery and has become considerably more true since. Not painful. Not frightening. Genuinely inconvenient, and it took me about four months to work out that it was fat rather than volume that decided it. Smaller and less rich has more or less solved it.

The question. Has anybody without a gallbladder had a proper conversation with a clinician about this, and what did they say? Mine was relaxed to the point of being unhelpful — she said there was no particular reason it would be a problem, which may well be true and did not tell me anything about what to expect. And the guides here, which are good, are naturally written for people who still have one.

Also, and this is the honest part: there is a small mean satisfaction in having got that particular worry out of the way in 2016. I recognise this is not a healthy attitude and I am keeping it anyway.

104

BaySt Ives, UK
#1

St Ives. Mine came out last June, so I am on the other side of the same line — worried about it, had it, now in your club.

What my surgeon said, unprompted, at the follow-up: that the loose digestion afterwards is common, that it is about bile arriving without anywhere to be stored, and that it usually settles over months but not always. She said nothing at all about the medicine, and when I asked she said she had no reason to think it made any difference either way and that I should ask the prescriber.

Which I did. Who said the same thing in the other direction. So: two shrugs, both honest.

43me too 8

MiraFacilitatorRotterdam, Netherlands
#2

Hedda, I want to be careful here because you have asked a question where the truthful answer is that there is not much to say.

What is reasonably established is that gallstone problems are more common during rapid weight loss by any route, which is why the topic comes up so often in this community. For people who have already had the organ removed, that particular risk is not on the table, and I am not aware of good evidence that says anything else changes. Bile-related loose stools after cholecystectomy are well known and there are treatments for them that a gastroenterologist can talk about.

Your clinician being relaxed was probably accurate rather than dismissive, though I understand why it felt like nothing. If the digestion is affecting your life rather than just annoying you, that is a reason to ask for a referral rather than to manage it with smaller portions forever.

49me too 6

GwynethAberdare, UK
#3

Aberdare. I am one of the worried threads — mine was found last May and out in June — and I want to say that reading somebody be wry about it is oddly steadying.

Nine years on the other side of it and it is a footnote in your life. That is the bit I could not imagine at the time.

46me too 7

MaudGhent, BE
#4

Retired midwife, Ghent. On the small mean satisfaction: keep it. Nine years of not worrying about something is a legitimate prize and you paid for it with two bad attacks and an operation.

I have a similar feeling about my appendix, which went in 1974 and has never troubled me since.

51me too 9

OzrenZagreb, HR
#5

Zagreb. Mine out in 2020. Fat rather than volume — yes. Exactly that, and it took me two years rather than four months to work it out, so you have done well.

The specific thing that catches me now is anything with cream in a restaurant. At home I am fine because I know what is in it.

38me too 6

OttoPrague, CZ
#6

Prague. Czech directness, English forums. I have not had mine out and I read this circle for the opposite reason to you — to find out what the worry is actually about rather than what the internet says it is about.

This thread has done more for that than the guides, no offence to the guides. Two shrugs, both honest, is a very useful phrase for the whole subject.

41me too 5

HeddaCopenhagen, DK
#7

Referral it is, then. Mira is right that I had settled into managing something rather than asking about it, and I would tell anybody else in here off for that.

Bay — welcome to the club. It is a footnote, I promise. Mine took about eighteen months to become one.

44me too 4