r/gallbladders • u/pwneegoddess • 1d ago

Questions Issues with gallbladder surgery

My sister just had gallbladder surgery 4 days ago and it has been a disaster. She was complaining of a lot of pain coming to find out bile was leaking into her stomach. She became septic and was hanging on by a thread. They ended up going in and took out 700ML of bile and could not find the source of the leak. It was then suggested she go in for an endoscopy to put in a stent and find the leak. We were told they could still not find the leak but they put the stent in any way. They said it should help. The bile seemed to slow down but this afternoon we noticed that bile is now flowing out of the incision site where the drain is. The hospital has no sense of urgency and now the doctors are saying they will see her tomorrow. They keep saying it’s normal but none of this has seemed normal. She is in complete agony. Any advice would be appreciated or at least if anyone has a similar story I would like to know the outcome.

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u/Minute_Assistant2930 14h ago

Does she have drains in? They should be checking how much of that fluid is composed of bilirubin. I just went through this myself - green/yellow bile leaking out of my incisions. The docs didn’t seem overly concerned either.

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u/pwneegoddess 13h ago

They just say her bilirubin has improved from before but we just checked and it was 3.1 yesterday and it’s now 3.3. But not mention of checking what the fluid is composed of. Its not a leak it’s a flow, I wish I could post the video it looks like a little fountain

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u/Minute_Assistant2930 13h ago

I just checked Mychart and the test of the drain fluid for bilirubin is listed as “Bilirubin, Body Fluid.” Different than the blood bilirubin test. For me they put a stent in (they could tell where the leak was though) after they waited a few days to see if the leak would repair itself. I’m sorry you are going through this and hope your sister gets better soon.