I had my appendix out laprascopically last summer and recovery took about 2 weeks to the point where I could run/jog again. Biking wasn't possible due to my fairly low aero position, so I started out with some easy runs of no more than 10k, mostly 5k. Overall it took about a month to fully recover to the point where I could do normal workouts. In total about 3 months to regain lost fitness, which isn't too bad considering they poked holes in me and chopped up pieces of my intestines! I agree with one of the above posters. If it hurts STOP. Don't just think you can run through it. My uncle is a surgeon and he said the exact same thing. The last thing you want is to tear something open inside, which can be fatal...

---

---

Hopefully you will not get any side effects. If you do they will develop in the next few months.

Yes it's a pain in the ass to do the surgery and drag the gall bladder out through the small hole (I assume you do laproscopic.) But the thread is actually about recovery if I'm reading it correctly. There is a hole in the guy's abdominal cavity and he probably needs to give it 3 weeks after he feels good to stress it, right? Three is a good baseline, two is probably enough.

But the side effects can also effect recovery. If you are an unlucky one to get the side effects, it will affect training and how you eat. It will also affect on where you can run, all part of recovery.

The simple fact is that you are in the minority. The majority of patients who undergo cholecystectomy have no lifelong issues or problems. The risk is small and the majority of patients who have this done electively are discharged home without any further problem. There are a small percentage of patients who usually because of anesthesia issues require an overnight stay.

A gall bladder removed emergently or with complications is another issue. Pancreatitis complicating gall bladder disease can result in hospitalization for days to weeks, and can even result in death. The fact of the matter is that a gall bladder that produces stones will always produce stones. Cutting out stones would be an exercise in futility--not only would you not be guaranteed normal function, but the stones which result from an improper balance in the constituents of the bile would form again. Actigall was once touted as the medicine that would solve the problem with gall stones and reduce the need for surgery. In actuality, it worked only on small cholesterol stones which promptly recurred on stopping the medication. At the time, it also cost $180 a month and was not covered by insurance.

There have been many attempts at non-operative treatment of gall stones including ultrasonic lithotripsy similar to what's done for kidney stones and laser ablation of stones. Bottomline is that they don't work. If you have symptomatic gall stones the treatment is still laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Sadly, there will be the occasional patient with chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain, after gall bladder removal. In those cases, we try and treat the symptoms. Also, patients who have the gall bladder removed based on a function study rather than for stones or infection also do not fare as well with long term relief of their symptoms. If you have been advised to have elective gall baldder surgery in those circumstances it is good to have a long talk with your surgeon about the risks/benefits of the surgery including potential complications and longterm prognosis prior to undergoing the surgery. Patients with a nuclear medicine biliary scan that shows suboptimal contraction of the gall bladder with stimulation and reproduction of the pain during the test only have about a 50:50 chance of long term relief by having their gall bladder removed. Not bad odds if you feel incapacitated frequently by your symptoms, but poor odds if it happens once in a blue moon and you recover quickly.

I see this post was from a couple of years ago but this exact thing just happened to me and I am a week into my recovery as well. Can you remember when you started running again? I was at the end of my marathon training program, supposed to do the PEC marathon in a week. So I went into the surgery in tip top shape.

Wow, that is encouraging. I had absolutely no symptoms before the attack and then it was so bad that they had to take it out along with several stones the following day due to infection and the severity of the inflammation. The other thing was they were very concerned about my heart rate being so slow as well as my liver counts being screwed up. In retrospect, the liver was messed up not only due to the infection but due to the fact that I ran 100km the previous week and am recovering from that as well as low B12 levels, low iron stores and low magnesium. It all makes sense now but they thought I was a heavy drinker and asked me how much I drank. When I told them, they didn't believe me and said are you sure that is all you drink? I think MD's need to be a little more aware of the effects that training has on the human body. Otherwise, my hat goes off to them for how busy they are, how much they need to know and for their calmness under pressure with no sleep and probably a poor diet! Good for them! Thanks for all they do.

I had mine out in '05. I had a HIDA scan with CCK stimulation. Ejection fraction was 6%. The gallbadder was dead. I had lapro to remove it. I had problems at first but after a while it settled. Eat low fat and bland for a few weeks. As I was told the body has to adjust, some do it sooner than others.

Actually there are cases when nothing else left than to just remove it( unfotunately.

By the way.. Could anybody share the symptoms at the early stages of gallbladder problems? I would be grateful for any information, experience or materials.. I found this article.. but not sure if this is relevant- What are Signs of Gallbladder Problems? Is it close enough?

4 Fs - fat, female, 40, and fertile(pregnant). I was average weight, male, 26, and not pregnant.

Gal stone symptoms resembled acid reflux. It would occur just after going to bed where I would feel like crap. Seemed to be triggered by fatty food or alcohol. Eventually it got to the point where it felt like somebody was knifing me in the gut and the only comfortable position was fetal.

---

Swim - Bike - Run the rest is just clothing changes.

Same with me.

I did a short test-run on the 6th day, but had some tissue pain at the site, and people told me to stop because I was harming the sutures from healing. Today is the 9th day and I feel no pain unless I touch my belly-skin, where it is still sensitive. I stopped taking Advil after the 5th day.

I feel up to running, biking, and swimming now, but I don't want to tear something that is healing. But if he says I can do whatever if I feel up to it, I do feel up to it. I will skip MTB for a while and just do road biking.

As for people who say it is a mistake to remove it - my father had his removed and has had no issues. It is not a needed organ - the digesting of fat thing doesn't seem to matter.

I was running within a week of having mine removed. Mine was badly infected. Local doctor said I had the flu and sent me home. Came within a hair of dying several days later. But, once it was out, I snapped back pretty quickly. Haven't had a problem since. Eat whatever I want. Overall digestive system works better than before, so I guess I got lucky.

A primer on gallbladder/stone disease to clear up some confusion

Cholelithiasis:
Gallstone formation within the gallbladder-
Very common, I would say that 20-30% of adult patients have gallstones visible on ultrasound or CT.
Not everyone is symptomatic
When they do cause symptoms, they are often non-specific and it is quite difficult to attribute these symptoms to gallstones.
the phrase "biliary colic" refers to a collection of symptoms including post-prandial pain and discomfort, as well as bloating
This causes a lot of difficulty for clinicians, because these symptoms cross over with many other pathologies. Often surgeons will take out the gallbladder without being 100% sure that the patients symptoms are caused by the gallbladder, usually because all other options have been exhausted. However, there is of course a lot of potential for excessive surgical intervention in this population.
and No, you can't go in and "pluck" out gallstones, because more of them will form.

Cholecystitis

Acute: a gallstone becomes lodged in the cystic duct, which is the duct that connects the gallbladder to the common bile duct for drainage into the bowel.
presents with RUQ pain, fever
Often has classic imaging findings on ultrasound and CT, making diagnosis more straight forward. The patient is treated with antibiotics and generally "cooled" off before gallbladder removal to prevent recurrence.

Chronic: gallbladder does not function properly
often the gallbladder will have a low "ejection fraction", meaning it does not squeeze out bile very well. This predisposes to bile stasis, bacterial overgrowth, and stone formation. This sets patients up for biliary colic OR acute cholecystitis.
removal is the best treatment.

Cholangitis:
gallstone lodged in the common bile duct resulting in biliary tree infection.
patients very sick, with jaundice, elevated LFTs, fever, and pain.
treated with antibiotics and removal of stone by endoscopy.

Using Wikipedia as a legitimate source of medical information is probably your first mistake.

You can't just "take the stones out" and leave the gallbladder. We've tried that, it doesn't work.

You can't shatter the stones with an ultrasound like you do kidney stones. We've tried that, it doesn't work.

You can't "melt the stones" with medication or "cleanses". We've tried that, it doesn't work, at least not yet.

It is not a vital organ in the sense you can live without it. That being said, we usually don't recommend operation just for the presence of stones, since roughly 20% of people walking the planet right now have gallstones. Many will be just fine. Some have symptoms related to those stones, though, and once symptoms start, the likelihood of subsequent complications from those stones (including acute cholecystitis, infection and other potentially fatal complications like pancreatitis), skyrocket, so we recommend removal, because it eliminates that risk, and people feel better. It's not barbaric, it's called science.

If you have a better way, the onus is on you to prove it. Be sure to bring a few dozen randomized controlled trials with you while you're at it. Until then, maybe give surgeons the benefit of the doubt.

gfgirl- 2 hrs after I finished a sprint, I went to the hospital to pick up a family member and while there I had an attach which lead to my GB removal the next day on 5/13, unplanned at ER. I did the 4 small incisions also.
week 1 - only walking, week 2 & 3 - I did a ton of chores mostly related to walking, mowing lawn, house hold activities, lots of walking while at work but no lifting that was more than a gallon of milk.
At 3 week visit, Surgeon cleared me for all activity except weights which he said 6 weeks. My PCP also 6 weeks for weights unless light arm workouts.
I will start actual running on 6/9 approx 1 month from the surgery, ditto swimming and cycling. My plan is to do 30 min work outs for the next 2 weeks at 50% max, this brings me to 6 weeks post removal where I plan to bump up the effort. Blogs and videos have polar opposites on opinions which is not encouraging so what I have decided to do is find feedback from persons with my age, lifestyle, activity level, body chemistry and so on. In other words trying to compare apples with apples, however, the counter argument to this is that all of us have different body chemistry.
For profile, i'm a 42 m with 155 lbs and have been doing 1 sprint per year and thought planned to do 4 in all this year or 1 half IM, however, due to the GB issue I am only going to spend this year recovering. My choice to be conservative is because I want to ensure the internal lining are cured properly, I have read that full strength of those can take 6 months and I want to keep a strong core.
On a different topic please research diet adjustments.

This is what happened to me last year. Frickin' ouch. It felt a little like gas, but the pain was intense - enough for me to call an ambulance, because I wasn't sure what was going on and was home alone and there's this pain near my chest. By the time the ambulance arrived the pain was mostly gone, but I went along for the ride. They kept me overnight because they said if I ate or drank anything I'd have another attack. The next day they yanked that puppy and the doc showed me a stone. Not only was it huge, it was cube-shaped. That kinda freaked me out.

They say you might notice some troubles while eating spicy or fatty foods afterward, but I've seemed to be among the majority that notice no real differences. I actually started running within 2 weeks of surgery... and promptly injured my leg, lol. But the actual surgery recovery was nothing.

---

@brad_glasgow

This comment reflects much of my experience. I had my gall bladder out surgically after mysterious and significant gastric pain (only like once a year). It was about nine years ago and I was training for an IM. I think I took it really easy for about a week, and then I think I training again within two weeks. It was laparoscopic surgery and I had no issues at all.

I have had no issues since then, as well. So listen to your doctor but to your body, too. Many doctors are cautious. Good luck,

Have you tried cholestyramine for the diarrhea? Can be quite helpful for many patients.

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Geniuine question, what are the issues? I’ve had mine removed, and I have no idea what these issues are. I’ve not noticed any difference in life after.

What are common complaints? It could be I’m missing something I think is normal.

I am glad I found this thread. I am a relatively healthy 37M and had acute gallbladder pain develop last week. I went from not knowing I had a problem to having emergency surgery to remove it, and the doctors describing my case as being relatively severe.

90% of people I find out anecdotally who had it removed were old/fat/unhealthy (or healthier women, since it skews female) so I am glad I am not the only male athlete to have this happen.

It's been a week and I have been walking every day. Pain was gone after about 3 days. Sounds like I can run at 2 weeks, and lift at 5. I'll discuss with the doc on Wednesday.

So far my GI system seems to be adjusting quickly.