I am a 1%er.

i.e. 99% of all gallbladder surgeries go as planned with no complications, yet I am the other 1%.

That said, breathe! Breathe in. Breathe out. It's one of the more common surgeries and become merely a boring footnote in most people's lives. So, first thing you need to do is relax a bit. I get the anemia puts you in a somewhat different class, but considering you don't have a fatty liver, I'm going with you have other things going for you too. Mostly you're young enough not to have a fatty liver. (I know. Middle-aged people don't consider themselves young, but a a third of the world disagrees. lol) Chances are good you'd be a 99%er.

I know this sounds weird because something did go wrong with me and you're probably thinking I'm telling you to go for it. On the first part, right. I get how bad it can get. I'm disabled with chronic pain, (and across two quadrants, so I don't fit with the handy charts either), but from what I've learned since, I'm on the good end of being a 1%er.

BUT it's not like there are two choices. There are four choices and you don't even know that yet.
1. Get it done, because they said so.
2. Find out why they said so.
3. Don't get it done.
4. Go for the alternative, if they answer the second one like I think they will.

First thing to know is why do they want your gallbladder out? I know three reasons -- gallstones, pain in upper abdomen, (sometimes pancreatitis), and it's dying.

Well, if it's dying, get it out because when it does die it will cause gangrene which is a big thing to worry about. (You'll die.)

If it's pain, having it removed ends the pain usually. (Then again, no one knows if that pain would have continued, or for how long.)

BUT if it is gallstones, go for the alternative they never mention unless the patient becomes like me. Gallstones are simply an excess of bile that solidifies in the gallbladder over time. (The majority of people have some by the time they're middle-aged. Matter of fact, they usually hit if you are "female, fertile, forties, and fat." I had just taken off my fat the year before. Go figure. Although, oddly enough most of the people I know who had it removed are men. Most autopsies prove gallstones, and yet that was never the person's complaint or cause.) Sure enough, GIs can take them out without cutting.

Since you made me google a bunch of words you used, I'm going to do it to you. (lol) Same concept as an ERCP, except they can do something at the front of the camera, so it's called an MRCP. They can remove the gallstones by putting you into a light sleep, (or heavy sleep, since they stopped trusting the light sleep when I started living on pain pills), putting a camera down through your mouth all the way, (if you've ever had an endoscopy, THAT camera), to your gallbladder and sucking the stones out. Or picking them out. Never learned which. I slept through them. (lol)

No idea of the safety issues for that, but I know others who are 1%ers from gallbladder removal, but have never met anyone who got hurt from an endoscopy. Sounds like you're heavy into understanding the medical words, so feel free to investigate on that one.

The one thing you should not do yet is to panic. Find out why they want it out, and if it works fine, ask for Plan B. They may pretend not to understand, but you can always say something like, "You know after someone has their gallbladder out, but they're still in incredible pain four months later, so you decide it's worth pursuing, and then look for straggling gallstones through an MRCP? Yeah. Like that."

Considering I was never given that option pre-operation, no idea if it will work. But ever since I was a young middle-ager with a gallbladder, I really wish I knew that was a choice.

And, I hope my homespun humor relaxed you a bit. If anything could go wrong in life, it has happened to me or my husband. Between the two of us, the only thing we haven't been through -- thankfully -- is murder. Think of what else could go wrong -- medically or criminally, and yeah. Probably lived through it.

A couple of our biggest, medically, were both becoming disabled within three years of each other and his heart attack was so bad it took seven months to recover. When he saw doctors for follow-ups afterwards more than one called him "the Miracle Man." (I'll skip where we were targeted criminally.)

Including the part where I became a 1%er in chronic pain from my gallbladder removal, I still think that part only rates as a C for average. Far worse can happen. And, thank God, far better does too. (Hubby and I are happily married 43 years later, so "far better.")

Please. Deliberately work this out, but don't let it work you over. I hope I helped in a different way than you asked.

Jump to this post