Over the past 3 weeks I've been in extreme pain, and it finally made me go to the ER the other night... There they told me it's probably my gallbladder, in that case I'd have to have it removed. That requires surgery and naturally, I flipped out and I did more research. Not only did I realize how close the gallbladder is to vital organs, but I remember a story someone once told me of someone dying because of an accidental cut under the knife. Now I'm terrified it's going to happen to me :/ I don't really know what to do since either tonight or tomorrow I'll find out for sure if I'm stuck going under the knife. I think this is the most scared I've ever been in my life. :icon_sad::tears:
It's tough going in for surgery. Everyone who's ever undergone surgery is terrified (unless they're on extreme medication or something). Gall bladder surgery is fairly routine so you should have very little to worry about. There will always be stories of people being damaged by any surgery of any kind, but that's because there are billions of people in the world, odds are one person might be hurt. That's still really good odds right there. What you never hear about are the thousands of successful surgeries in the world. Just try and remain calm.
I got my gallbladder removed less than a month ago, and I'm still alive. I also feel great without it, since the pain and nausea are completely gone now. It's natural to be scared though. I made a post about having surgery anxiety as well. Like you, I had done a lot of research and freaked myself out over the 2% (I believe) death rate associated with surgery. Compared to those who are still alive, that is an extremely small amount of people who died during surgery. Honestly, not having your gallbladder removed would probably be more dangerous. It can cause some serious conditions that require an emergency operation, and unscheduled surgery is definitely more risky. From my own experience, stop researching since that will just make you more nervous, and breathe.
First - calm down. You're going to be fine. Take a deep breath. To begin with, if your research involved certain prominent medical websites which I can't name here (since we're not supposed to link to external sites), but which are supposed to provide general medical advice on any given topic, I would forget everything you read asap. Not only are many of those sites occasionally inaccurate, but they often present the absolute worst-case scenario ever possible. For that matter, if a website was the end-all of medical knowledge, it wouldn't be necessary to spend years upon years in medical school. The gall bladder is certainly near many vital organs - but most of your organs are vital. It would be hard to find something next to a non-vital organ. We kind of need most of them. Also, gall bladder surgeries are some of the easiest and least-complicated procedures out there - and they aren't even done with a knife anymore, but rather laparoscopically (the upshot of which is that small puncture wounds are the only external sign of the procedure, and since the muscle tissue isn't cut, recovery time is drastically increased). My mom was a surgical assistant and was present at thousands of gall bladder removals over the years, and never had anything bad happen to a single patient. If you're worried, talk to your doctor. They'll tell you what's up, but in all likelihood you'll be out by a day afterwards at most - if they don't just send you home right away, that is. It is a surgery, and you should follow your doctor's instructions, but you're going to be just fine. (*hug*)
