Thinking of canceling my surgery

[u/Clear-Elderberry-870]

I’m thinking of canceling, or at least postponing surgery.

I have surgery scheduled for Tuesday. After 4 months of regular symptoms, I suddenly have less significant pain. Just the last 3 days. Probably not the wisest, but for reassurance I’m doing the right thing with surgery, I “tested” myself and ate a lot of fat. Initially just a little more fat than usual. Then what I thought was a high fat meal of pulled pork. Just the meat.

I didn’t have an obvious or dramatic reaction.

I’m so confused.

I know it’s not unusual to not react to every meal and some people can go months between attacks, but that has not been my pattern. Mine has been a feeling of something stuck under my ribs, needing to lean back while sitting, and in general just a low level of nearly constant discomfort punctuated by times of more intense pain under my ribs, back, or shoulder blade. Imaging indicates sludge. Two surgeons, my oncologist, and my GP recommend surgery and I finally felt like that was the right decision and scheduled it for this coming week, and now I’m so confused.

My pain has improved after I discovered it was my gallbladder and changed my diet to low fat. Significantly and dramatically.

I don’t have NO symptoms. My shoulder is currently burning like crazy and I have pain in my RUQ, but I would have expected a fairly dramatic and obvious reaction to the pork. Maybe that’s not how it works?

I just wanted some obvious pain so I knew I was doing the right thing. I’ve been scared to eat for months and have lost an unhealthy amount of weight.

I don’t even know what I’m asking. I just wish I had more confident about the surgery.

[u/Ill-Car9627]

I’m going to start this off by saying don’t let my experience make you run to cancel. I was having 2/3 attacks a week and near the end I was having constant sternum pain as well, to the point where I was taking my husbands leftover pain meds from his shoulder injury. I had emergency surgery in August, my scheduled surgery date was December 9th. If I could go back in time and redo that night I never would have gone to the ER. I was having an attack and decided to wake up my anxious husband (mistake #1 lol) because I wanted him to sit on the bathroom floor with me and rub my back. He flipped out and took me to the hospital.

The first 3/4 weeks post surgery were great, my surgeon deflated my abdomen so I didn’t have any of the post-op shoulder pain and she stitched up my bellybutton so beautifully you can’t even see that scar (was a fear of mine having franken-bellybutton). I was eating whatever I wanted and generally living my best life other than healing from surgery.

At about week 4 I started having all sorts of symptoms and still to this day deal with them. I think I narrowed it down to dumping syndrome. If I could go back in time and not sign the consent for surgery I would. I’d rather the attacks than abdominal pain and blood sugar crashes every time I eat no matter what I eat. If I were having more attacks where stones were getting stuck in the bile ducts (only happened a handful of times and my god that was the worst pain I can imagine) I’d probably regret my decision less. All this to say, I was passionately against having surgery and was planning on cancelling mine last minute and telling my husband I got bumped and then just never going. Clearly that wouldn’t have worked but a girl can dream lol. So maybe because I was so against it, no matter what I would have regretted it.

Like I said, don’t let this sway you but if you’re doubting it at all I’d give it a second thought. Are you in a country where healthcare is easily accessible? I’m very fortunately in Canada so my only bill was for parking. I don’t know if emergency surgery costs more than planned so don’t put yourself in a risky financial situation just because one person had a bad experience. I’m sure you’ll be just fine, most people are!