Has anyone any experience of gallbladder surgery

HurdyGurdy

My son's partner is having her gallbladder removed soon. Hopefully this will be by keyhole surgery.

Any idea roughly how long she will likely take to recover from this? I know it will vary from person to person, but she lives quite a long way away from us, and the only person she has near where she lives who could look after her is her father, who is unable to take time off work to look after her.

She has an 18 month old toddler, and won't be able to properly look after him during the recovery period. Or herself, I suspect (although I have no idea of how incapacitated she will be following the surgery).

My son has arranged to have three weeks off work (took quite a bit of persuasion by him to get them to agree!), so he can go and stay with them to look after her, and take care of the little one. But he's not sure if that will be enough time.

I have suggested that they can come and stay here while she recovers, as there are more of us here who can help her and may enable my son to not have to have as much time off work, but I know nothing about the procedure, and don't know if she would be able to travel the 180 or so miles from where she lives, to our house. I would drive up and collect her and the little one, so not expecting her to make her own way here! She is a bit of a stubborn one though, and I am not sure she will want to leave her own home to come and stay here.

If three weeks isn't going to be enough time, then I can probably manage to take a week off at the end of my son's three weeks to go and be with them, but again, not even sure if that would be enough.

Not asking for any kind of medical advice here, but just an estimation of how long she is likely to need to be "nursed" following the surgery.

elsien

Someone I support had gall bladder surgery - should have been keyhole, but on the day when he had a look, the consultant decided keyhole wasn't an option. Which meant a longer hospital stay than originally planned, although your son's partner should have been made aware of this possibility.
She really needs to be getting this sort of info from the hospital, due to individual circumstances.
However as far as I remember, there was very little in the way of nursing care as such, and the person was up and about and doing for themselves pretty much straight away after they left hospital. The bits he needed help with were around lifting/manual handling/exertion, same as after any abdominal operation. Other than that, it was life back to normal fairly quickly. So I'd guess the care of the baby is going to be the main issue for her to start with.

Edit - have you seen this link?
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Laparoscopiccholecystectomy/Pages/Recoverypage.aspx

kelpie35

I had this operation by keyhole surgery. Was in hospital for 5 days.

Was not allowed to drive for 2 weeks.

Told not to lift anything heavy for 6 weeks.

Returned to a manual job 7 weeks later.

Hope this helps.

lizziebabe

Hope all goes well. Sometimes there is pain caused by air put in so that the scope can see the area, so do advise her to take painkillers that are offered so that she can mobilise easier.

Good advice about the op changing to open surgery, this does happen and does affect the length of stay in hospital and recovery.

Looby_-_Lou_2

Assuming that she is able to have straightforward key hole surgery I would have thought 3 weeks was more than adequate.

I was home the next day and driving within the week. Though I did have to take it easy for a couple of weeks. My mil had my girls for about 3 days after I came home but we managed fine after that.

Callie22

I had my gallbladder out by keyhole surgery. I was in hospital overnight and I felt ok within a week, although I did have to be careful with bending and lifting for a couple of weeks. Personally I found the surgery to be very easy, and much, much less painful than a bad gallbladder attack!

kara7758

I also had gall bladder removed by keyhole surgery. Very straightforward op for me. I was advised not to lift anything and rest for two weeks until sutures had dissolved which I did and I was back at an office job within three weeks. Hope it all goes well for her!

Wyre

My friend had gall stone surgery recently. It was keyhole and she was in hospital over night then home. She was told to take it easy but in reality she was pretty much back to normal in about 7 days. She did have times when she over did it, but it was a case of listening to her body and knowing when to sit down. She is one of those people that need gaffer taping to the chair if you want them to slow down!

I hope the op goes well for her and she has as easy a time as my friend did.

Janepig

My understanding is that gall bladder removal via keyhole surgery is very straightforward - if you have the op early enough in the day then you can be out of hospital by teatime and recovery is pretty quick afterwards. I would certainly think three weeks is more than enough to cover it.

However, I recently went into hospital as an emergency case and had my gall bladder removed in a procedure that started as keyhole but changed to open surgery when they couldn't remove the stone (it was huge!) and my stomach and gall bladder were infected. I was told that the chances of this happening are pretty slim, about 1 in 50 I think. Just my luck. Anyway, that was six weeks ago today and I'm still off work, and will be for another two weeks. The wound was (and still is) pretty big, I had 32 staples between the main wound and the three keyhole wounds (one of which was in my bellybutton, ewww). It's also a longer operation and as such the effects of the anaesthetic took longer to wear off. I had the op on the Friday and was home on Monday, but really I came out too early, but I was desperate to get out.

Fingers crossed it'll all go a bit more smoothly for your son's partner, OP. And statistically speaking it should.

Jx

HurdyGurdy

Thank you all - that sounds very encouraging. Apart from poor Janepig, who seems to have have a rotten time. I hope you are soon fully fit again.

So on average, assuming it does go ahead with keyhole, three weeks should be ok.

Your replies were all very helpful - thank you. And elsien, thank you for the link. That was really useful.

She has been warned about the possibility of it having to be open surgery, but we are all being "glass half full" about it at the moment

elisebutt65

I had keyhole surgery about 6 years ago. I had the op early in the morning and was out the next day. I think I had about a day to myself to recover properly, then I had to go back to hobbling on the school run. Littlie was in year 1 then & school is just round the corner. DS1 was 12 and able to get himself to school luckily, as his was a lot further away.

I had to miss one of my exams at Uni, but did it later, but other than that, as a single mum with family miles away, I pretty much had to get on with it & rest when I could. I just couldn't laugh or cough properly for about a week. Had to take some of my own stitches out as they were too tight though