When Your Gallbladder Isn’t Your Friend

GALL…

“Of all the unmitigated gall!” “He sure has a lot of gall!”

Have you heard that? My mom used to say it about certain people. I don’t think it’s used very much now, but it still has a relevant place in our language.

Gall is a digestive juice secreted by the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and aids in the digestion of fats. vocabulary.com

“If someone has gall, they’re irritating. In fact, as a verb, gall means “to irritate” like new tight jeans that gall your thighs. Gall is “bile,” too, like what’s in a gall bladder. Back in the days of Hippocrates, if the four humors of the body were out of whack, it affected your spirits. If you had too much bile, or gall, then you’d be aggressive or depressed. It’s also a noun for “deep feeling of ill will.”

I’m reminded of this because I’m on my way for a yearly ultrasound to check on the status of a growth on my gallbladder.

Prior to my first ultrasound, I experienced right upper quadrant abdominal pain and that’s how I initially learned about the cyst/polyp.

Adenomyomatosis: An abnormal overgrowth of the gallbladder lining that forms cysts in the gallbladder wall. Scientists aren’t sure why it occurs, but it isn’t usually harmful.

So far (knock on wood), it hasn’t really changed size enough to cause alarm, but my doctor asked me why I haven’t had it removed. She thought it was easier to have it removed than to monitor it on a yearly basis.

No one had suggested that before, especially since it hasn’t reached the size protocol for removal. I’m also thinking that if I did that, it could grow back and anything invasive seems to increase the probability of creating something new and different and perhaps even malignant.

I told her my prudent course of action is to continue to get a yearly ultrasound and if stays the same, to continue to do nothing. I don’t believe in slicing and dicing my body parts unless it’s a thousand percent medically necessary.

Waiting for the ultrasound report is always stressful and I hope when it finally gets emailed to me, it’ll reveal no significant change in size or location to the little cyst valiantly clinging to my gallbladder wall — which would be great news and I’ll be able to stop worrying about it — until next year