isaac-1

I hate to say it, but sometimes people do look “good”, going through my ordeal last summer that ended up resulting in surgery removing my bile duct and gallbladder with a benign tumor, I lost around 35-40 pounds in 3-4 months which I had been needing to loose for years. Since then I have gained about 5-10 of those pounds back (a lot of that in muscle mass), anyway the other day I ran into an old friend that I had not seen in a couple of years, and he made a comment about me looking good, looking like I had lost some weight, etc. and I told him it was not intentional, but I was doing good now, etc.

anyway, best of luck to you with the surgery, and while I do not know exactly what your going through, I can at least say I have been close to it, did a potentially risky surgery, get to go see the doctor for liver level blood work every 6 months for the rest of my life, and all that.

Ike

If your mother does have bile duct surgery I can tell you from experience that even if things go great the recovery process is a major ordeal. I am in my 40’s and in overall good health and I spent almost a week in the hospital after the surgery, but the thing I was not expecting was the level of fatigue that lasted for months. The first week or so at home and I needed near constant help, walking just a short distance around the house felt like I had ran a marathon. It was over a month after surgery before I was able to drive myself to the corner store and about 6 weeks before I was able to return to work part time (even then I would have to sit at my desk for the first 15-20 minutes and do almost nothing to recover from the 15 minute drive to work, I can see why 2-3 months for return to work is often quoted, I just did not have that luxury). This only addresses the fatigue, there were also inital mobility limitations for the first couple of weeks (needed help sitting up, getting out of bed, and even walking around the first few days at home, and of course there were major dietary limitation, that have slowly improved over the last 9 months, mainly lack of ablity to eat fried or greassy foods, for the first several weeks even something as simple as a club cracker or slice of cheese was too greasy to digest, by Christmas I was able to eat a slice of pizza, but not without hours of digestive issues afterward, and now I can tolerate a small dry, non greassy cheese burger cooked on the BBQ grill with only minor digestive issues.

Ike

Your mother’s story reminds me a bit of my own (which you can read about on here in more detail if you look at my old messages), just under a year ago I went in to see my doctor thinking I was a ,mostly healthy 42 year old man, who was just getting over a broken back due to a fall a few months earlier, on a routine follow up visit, I mentioned I had been experiencing some itching and he did blood work for liver levels which started the ball rolling. Ultra-sound found gallstones, referral to a general surgeon then to an MRCP which showed a “blockage” in the common bile duct, so the surgeon sent me to a Gastroenterologist for an ERCP, which found the blockage was really a stricture (scraping biopsy negative, but also told they were unreliable in these cases), on to a specialist Gastroenterologist who did a Spyglass ERCP, biopsy again negative, but visually he reported it looked “highly consistant with CC”, places a stint to help things flow so on to the speciality liver surgeons. I have my fist gallbladder pain a few days before my appointment to consult with the surgeons, local doctor puts me on antibiotics knowing I was scheduled to see a surgeon within a few days, I see the surgeon am told it is an 80% chance of CC even with negative biopsies, he is concerend about the gallbladder infection, schedules me in for surgery (ended up getting a Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy instead of Whipple due to placement of the stricture higher up in the bile duct, similar surgery though), surgeon has a CT scan done, and ends up admitting my to the hospital on the spot, gallbladder is highly infected, erored into the liver, looks like the stint blocked the opening to the gallbladder which was already mostly blocked by gallstones, they put a drain in and have me on IV antibiotics for a week, then home for a week or so to let the infection clear up then back for the big surgery with a drain pouch taped to my side. I have the big surgery and thankfully it turned out the stricture was benign, the surgeon said it was best to do the surgery anyway as even if benign strictures can turn into CC a lot of the time. Spent a week in the hospital, then several weeks recovering at home, the surgery was rough, but the real issue was the fatigue afterward, even 6-8 weeks later I barely had the strength to drive myself to the store to run short errands. Anyway I just had my 6 month follow up, liver lelels look good, but the doctors are telling me it will have to be checked every 6 months from here on out.

To give you some idea about the surgery, I had a Roux-Y hepaticojejunostomy performed in conjunction with gallbladder removal, etc. 3 months ago for what was then suspected Cholangiocarcinoma which turned out to be a stricture in my bile duct caused by an extremely infected gallbladder or Mirizzi syndrome (the infection had eroded into the liver and effected the bile duct. In my reading this can appear very much like Cholangiocarcinoma and the surgical solution is much the same, it also has a high incidence rate of turning cancerous. I am a 42 year old man in good, but not great shape and this surgery was an ordeal, the procedure was performed by doctor Barakat in Houston, it lasted about 6-7 hours, my recovery has been much more difficult than I expected, at least it has been at a slower pace. I spent 5 days in the hospital after the surgery, the first two days are a bit foggy, but involved no eating or drinking, lots of tubes sticking out of me, and a morphine pain pump. The key themes of my recovery can be narrowed down to fatigue and digestive / eating problems. When they first started getting me up and moving the day after the surgery simply sitting in a chair felt like I was running a marathon, it was a month after the surgery before I had the strength to drive myself, and at 6-7 I was returning to work for limited hours (office work), I would have to sit at my desk and rest for about half an hour to recover from the ordeal of driving 15 minutes to work and walking into the office. Now at just under 3 months my strength is getting back closer to normal, I am still far weaker than I would like, but I can at least do normal daily activities like taking out the trash without having to lay down and rest afterward. As far as the digestive side goes, I have a very low tolerance for greasy or fried food, for the first month everything I ate caused a range of digestive issues, and I had no tolerance for greasy foods (even a sandwich with mayo or cheese was too much), this is slowly improving I can now eat limited greasy foods, nothing breaded and fried though without dire digestive results things like a little bacon or cheese, or even stir fried rice, last week a even managed to eat a fried chicken strip, although it did cause a evening of stomach issues, so perhaps it was still too soon. As to your mother’s ability to handle the surgery, I can’t really tell you, other than it is certainly an ordeal, and the recovery is not fast.

Ike