This last week has been eventful. I underwent a surgery to remove my unhealthy gallbladder. They call it cholecystectomy. I think I’m recovering well. My hobbies these days are sleep, few minutes of walk, and the OTT. After a week of vegetarian food, finally I could taste chicken again since yesterday. I don’t know why my gallbladder gone bad. I don’t know when it started, and what started it.
Gallbladder is an organ situated under the liver. The function of the gallbladder is that it stores some of the bile produced by the liver, concentrate it by removing the water content and pumps it into the opening of small intestine as needed, whenever we eat a high-in-fat food or over-eat, so that the digestion process is smooth.
When I informed few of my friends that I had to remove my gallbladder, I learned that this has become more common than what I had thought, unfortunately of course.
In my case I had absolutely no symptoms. No pain, no discomfort. After my recent weight reduction with diet and exercise, even the occasional bloating and heartburn issues also disappeared. I was completely fine, and if you are following me on Instagram (@takeiteashy), you would have seen me somersaulting into a swimming pool just a few weeks back. Mine was an incidental finding of a bad gallbladder in a routine ultrasound advised by a physician because my cholesterol levels were bad in a blood report. Again, this health report was as part of an optional complementary annual health check up offered by my employer offered to all employees.
I think it is because of the social media, the reels, the shorts and all, put out by doctors in specific, for last few years I have been voicing for regular health check ups after 30s among the people in my close circle. Most people nod like they agree, a few voice for regular check ups after 40, a considerable lot are afraid to do health check ups, a few others have an opinion that, doesn’t matter what we do, life is unpredictable so we are supposed to live happily till we can without bothering about these health and stuff.
My cholesterol levels have always been high, at least for last 13 years. Not medicinal level high, but just high. Since it never affected me symptomatically, I never bothered much about it either. For the last 2-3 years, I had been keeping a track of my cholesterol at least once in 6 to 12 months, but I never did anything much to try control it. Since I do not eat junk food regularly, and since I’ve always maintained the correct body weight throughout my life, I thought It’s Okay!!
I know of the normal cholesterol levels in people who eat more junk than me. I was always in question mode why my cholesterol is high. My mother used to say for some its hereditary. I googled it up and yes, she was right. They say that, cholesterol is 20% diet and 80% genetics. The only fault I could find in myself was that I never exercise. I was always lazy on that part. Never exercised in my life. I did not find a reason enough to motivate me to exercise. Post my school days, never really ran around and played. Except for the few dance performances during my college days, didn’t sweat much either. Used to walk around a lot, was not shy at all in that part. Water intake had always been great. A decent amount of weekend-cricket during early part of my career was yes, there.
My KFCs and Dominos were occasional, may be once in 6 to 12 months. The bajji bonda vadaas were not regular, maybe a few times in a month. The puffs and cutlets also fall into the latter mentioned frequency. I’m not a coffee addict. I don’t overeat sweets or snacks either. I eat only one third of what a “normal” person eats if you get what I’m saying. I don’t smoke. Never smoked in my life. Never tried a drink till the age of 34. A few drinks I had was only very recently, that too in a social setting with a 3-6 months interval well within limits.
Is it the cooking oil then? I did some research and found that using different cooking oils rather than the same one can affect health positively. Tried that too, but did not see much effect. Couple of years back I did meet a physician with my cholesterol numbers and requested for medicines, which can help reduce my cholesterol levels. I took this tablet for 2 to 3 months. He also recommended me to do cycling regularly so that my triglycerides come down, but as you can imagine, I did not do much cycling. I once consulted a cardiologist and did a whole heart related check ups and got a clean report. The cholesterol didn’t even touch my heart.
When I found an option to do a complementary annual health check up, I gave my samples last January. Cholesterol was as usual high. I met with the physician nearby my house and I wanted to request some medication, but for my surprise, he recommended me to go for an ultrasound scan. He wanted to understand where my cholesterol is getting deposited. It is in this scan, I learned that my gallbladder is not healthy and I had fatty liver. I could live with the finding that I had fatty liver because my cholesterol levels have always been high, but the issues with gallbladder was a news to me. They found few polyps in my gallbladder. In a small percentage of people, in long-term, this could turn into cancer and therefore the physician recommended me to meet with a specialist and proceed accordingly. I met with a Gastro specialist who did a fresh ultrasound at their hospital and found some irregularities, but nothing serious for an immediate concern, and therefore recommended review after six months.
Regarding cholesterol, the doctor denied to give me any medicine and asked me a question which I believe changed my life. He clearly told me that he’s not going to give cholesterol medicine for someone in the age of 35 and that too for cholesterol levels not as high, that he should prescribe medicines to control it. He asked me, “have you ever consistently exercised in your life, for a period of three months at least, and did a blood checkup?” My answer was no. He asked me to exercise regularly and decrease my carbohydrate intake so that my cholesterol levels will fall. This was the turning point.
I had a treadmill bought recently at home. From the very next day I started using it. I cut down my rice intake and other carbohydrate intake like Idli and Dosa. I was only having one third quantity of what I have been having so far. 95% reduced outside food. Replaced carbs with more quantities of vegetables, chicken and egg. It was challenging for first two weeks but the changes were visible in three weeks. I started losing weight. I lost six kgs in three months and gradually 9 kgs in a period of six months. I couldn’t be more proud of this achievement. I never thought I had the discipline in me to exercise consistently and maintain decent diet and reduce weight, but I did it. I came down from 80 kgs to 71. That’s how I learned carbs was the one been the largest causal factor for my cholesterol. I thought, had I known it earlier I would have done something about it. My triglycerides fell more than a 100 points, for the first time since a decade.
The time for review after six months which the doctor recommended was in the month of July, I went to the hospital with the hope that the issues that they found with my gallbladder has at least improved. To my shock, I learned that the polyp was still growing and this time they found couple of gallstones in my gallbladder. Doctor said that the reason for the gallstones could be due to my rapid weight reduction. The irony. Since stones could complicate things in future, the doctor recommended for the organ removal. I said Okay the next second.
If an issue could not be resolved with medicine, and best way forward is to remove the organ, why wait! What if this turns into cancer in future! That’s the story of how I separated from my gallbladder. With the surgery, I got four holes in my body that look like bullet wounds, and I hope and pray for a timely recovery.
I specifically wanted to write about this because that’s how important the annual health check up is. As I said, I had absolutely no symptoms, but still, one of my organs was suffering. If I understood the biopsy report correctly, what they saw as polyp in the ultrasound is not a polyp at all, but some inflammation caused by chronic irritation. My gallbladder had been unwell for quite sometime but giving out no noticeable symptoms at all. This was not visible in any of the blood and urine reports for the last 2 to 3 years.
In the internet, we can often see doctors recommend all of us to undergo health checkup once a year and monitor our health, exercise, sleep, to keep track of what we are eating so as to maintain a healthy life. To specifically speak about cancer, the web says that one in nine people in India will come across this disease at some point of their life. This is very scary, even to hear. We all know people suffering with this disease around us. Sometimes it’s our neighbours, sometimes it’s someone in our family, sometimes it is someone at work, or someone from their families. This is the unfortunate new normal. Some of these cancers if found early can be cured completely or at least helps in considerable extension of life. For example, breast cancer, if found early, may be cured completely. How many of us take the women at our home for breast cancer checkup once in a year is a question we should ask ourselves!
All that we need to do is go for a regular health check up after the age of 30, because in today’s world I don’t think the question is who will get cancer and who will not! It’s about who is monitoring and who is taking proactive actions to avoid avoidable complications. To bring such a tectonic shift in the thought process among the public is possible but it will be slow.
When people are afraid to even go for an annual health check up, when people think the hospitals are trying to make money by spreading panic, it’s definitely a challenge. Fortunately more and more people have become conscious about their health, food and exercise these days. Thanks to the social media.
Sedentary life kills. Start with a walk!