Gallbladder III - Memory of a goldfish

So I'm on holiday, the doc gives me strong painkillers, tells me to lay off fatty foods, lay off spicy foods, take it easy, and if I develop a temperature, come back or go to A&E - not good to have an infected gallbladder.


I live on sachets of instant porridge for a few days and gradually feel better. Friday night, there are six of us in residence, and I manage to make fresh crab linguine. I'm definitely better and the rest of the holiday passes off without major digestive incident.


Sat Sept 12 and we're back from hols. I feel normal. I go back on the 5-2 diet and for a couple of weeks all seems right with the world. I forget the agonising pain and general misery I suffered on hols. I'm in a good mood. I'm still avoiding bread, so still avoiding butter. I still haven't put this together in my mind. I am an idiot.


So it's Friday Sept 25th. Weekend coming up and I feel great. For supper I make tacos: blisteringly hot chilli with mince, kidney beans, chilli oil, lots of guacamole, sour cream, grated cheese etc etc. Lovely
Saturday, four of us go for a 10 mile walk and feel so smug that we take ourselves off for a few ridiculously strong cocktails, followed by a curry. This is no ordinary curry house. It is a curry house run by a madman. Conversation goes like this:
Me: Yes can I have a lamb madras...
Madman: Oooh no you don't want that. Let me make you something special
Me: but I like lamb madras
Madman: trust me, this will be fantastic
Me OK, and can we have a sag bhagi
Madman: Oooh no you don't want that. I've got something really special I know you'll absolutely love. You like things spicy?
Me: I do (what did the doc say? Was it lay off spicy foods?)
Madman: fantastic, Leave it to me

Are you ready to order now?
And so it went with everyone round the table. Result: Well, it was delicious but my curry was ridiculously hot and very rich, and if it hadn't been for the quart of bourbon sloshing round my system from the cocktails, I probably would not have touched it. We also had one of his so-called specialities, the tarka dall, which was absolutely delicious: unctuous and rich. At the end of the meal, there was a bit of the dall left in the serving dish and it had gone absolutely solid. Like a block of butter. I realised with a slight queasy feeling that the reason it was so delicious was probably because it must have been at least 50% ghee/butter/palm oil/axle grease/ Christ knows what.


Sunday: day of rest. No ill effects so far, and for some reason woke up really hungry. Made myself a breakfast treat of scrambled eggs with plenty of butter on buttered toast with tomatoes.
Lunch: The missus has gone out. I have a look in the fridge. Hmmm, a few chicken livers. I give them a sniff. Probably on the edge. Should I throw them out? Seems a bit of a waste. I am sure I can make a passable dish with them, So I fry up streaky bacon, garlic, onions, chicken livers, plenty of mustard, balsamic vinegar. Not bad.
Supper. I am making Spinakopita, a greek dish of filo pastry layers filled with spinach, grated cheese, feta cheese, ricotta cheese, fresh mint and dill. I put a pastry sheet in a baking dish and pour on melted butter. Another layer more butter. Another layer more butter. Five times, In goes the spinach, Another 5 layers of filo and butter. Very tasty. Is that a slight twinge I can feel? Perhaps a spot of indigestion. Must have been the muesli I had for breakfast


WHAT WAS I THINKING???

Gallbladder II - The Gathering Storm (copyrite W Churchill)

So over the last 12 months or so I have been doing the 5-2 diet which for those who have been living at the bottom of a dark pit, is where you eat normally for 5 days a week and have a very restricted, fasting diet on the other two. The idea is that you not only tend to lose weight, but it's also good for your health re blood sugar, cholesterol and all that other malarkey.
I kind of got into the routine of it: not easy but doable for me and I did indeed start to lose some weight - all good stuff.
Then about 8 months ago I started noticing that after a fast day, when I started eating normally, I was getting slightly uncomfortable digestive pains in my side. Didn't know what they were did I, not being the incredibly dull and irritating gallbladder expert that I now am. As I usually had a nice baguette for lunch on my non-fast days, I thought, maybe I was becoming gluten intolerant, rather than just my usual intolerant

Picture of me in one of my more tolerant moods


So what did I do? I gave up all bread and hey presto - felt fine for several months, Of course, I realise now with blinding clarity that what was making me feel fine was not the lack of gluten, but the lack of BUTTER. I love butter, and never stinted myself, and any piece of bread in any form had to be covered in it's own weight in butter before I would contemplate ingestion.



Here's me preparing the butter for a baguette. Hmmm I may need another pack
I mean, my gallbladder must have thought I'd cut my throat, so infrequently was it being used. Still had it's pesky gallstone problem of course, but who cares? it's just sitting back and watching the digestive show from the sidelines.


Then, on Aug 28th came THE HOLIDAY
Gentle reader, if there is ever a wakeup call for the digestive system, it is THE HOLIDAY
So. Up to the holiday, I was eating no bread and (without really realising it) no butter, very little carbohydrate (to maintain low GI and hence blood sugar) very little fat, not much cheese, hardly any meat, quite a bit of fish, including lots of raw salmon (I love sashimi) lots of steamed vegetables, fair amount of fruit. In essence, a pretty damn healthy, low fat, low sugar diet without really realising it


Here's what I had on the first three days of the holiday in Lymington (see Crabs posts)


DAY 1: spaghetti bolognaise, lots of cheese
DAY 2: lunch consisiting of fresh bread AND BUTTER from the market, seafood, cold meats, chutneys, pickles, pork pie was in there somewhere I think, cheese etc. Supper: out for an indian: lamb madras, lots of bhagis, pilau rice etc all swimming in fat
DAY 3: Roasted an enormous 12lb whole shoulder of pork I got in the market and had that for supper with masses of roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, roast carrots and parsnips, leeks in white sauce, gravy made with all the pork fat and juices, all the trimmings, little sausages wrapped in bacon, followed by a nice selection of full fat cheeses (and a bit of fruit)
DAY 4: I made Cassoulet with huge chunks of the left over roast pork (with not much fat trimmed off), toulouse sausages, confit duck (duck cooked in goose fat) lots of beans, all cooked in a rich sauce made with the leftover gravy enriched with red wine.
It was stonkingly delicious
DAY 5: had muesli and prunes for breakfast, and felt a little bit iffy in the morning. God help me, I blamed the prunes.
Lunch: a huge pork sandwich (still had masses left over), which I had made with lovely fresh white bread slathered with butter, mayonnaise, chutney, pickled onions, and of course some lettuce to watch my diet.


That afternoon, I suddenly screeched to a halt. If you had put an ear to my digestive system at that point, the conversation would have been along the following lines:
Stomach: CHRIST!! Here it comes again. What did he buy, a whole effing pig? Yo Brain - call the gallbladder AGAIN
Brain: OK, but he's not gonna like it. I mean, he's been working back to back twelve hour shifts, and he keeps grouching about the gallstones blocking his path
Stomach: MAKE THE GODDAM CALL!
Brain: Alright already. Jeez what a crouch. Yo Gallbladder
Gallbladder (exhausted) Don't you dare...I've been firefighting for four days straight and I ain't gonna stand for it no more.
Brain: Sorry matey, but it's more pork...
Gallbladder: WHAT...THE...FUCK... I tell you she's gonna blow...OK, OK, what the hell, I'll give it one more shot. Well here goes nothing. Stand back everyone. One...Two...Three...SQUEEEEEEZE
(there is the sound of a klaxon) NOW HERE THIS...NOW HERE THIS...GALLBLADDER BLOCKED I REPEAT...GALLBLADDER BLOCKED...GALLSTONES EVERYWHERE...IT'S LIKE A GODDAM ROCKSLIDE...


...and I'm deteriorating fast. I have an uncomfortable pain spreading around my middle which gradually gets worse as the afternoon and evening progresses, and I spend one of the most painful and horrible nights of my life with this unremitting pain in my stomach, under my rib cage, up my back. Nothing I can do, no position I adopt makes the slightest difference.


Exhausted, I take myself off to a doctor at 8.00am who hears my story and says instantly, "classic gallbladder. Have you changed your eating habits recently, or eaten anything fatty?"


And for the first time, the word gallbladder enters my consciousness.

Gallbladder I

Apologies to my dear reader (I think I have one) for my absence, but I have been on a rather long and nasty medical journey over the last few weeks, really starting with a vengeance on Sept 1st, but with hindsight, going back for a good few months before.


I am going to lay it out over the next few posts, so anyone suffering from nervous hysteria, or who has an aversion to unpleasant medical stories, or just can't stand the thought of the equivalent of being stuck in a lift with a wheelchair bound crabby old baldheaded liverspotted geezer banging on and on about his medical war stories, look away now.
I am hoping that it will be of general interest, but also specific interest to anyone who may be, or may suspect they are suffering with their gallbladder, or may wonder what the hell's going on, and recognise the symptoms as I describe what happened to me


OK, first a lesson about gallbladders. I thought a gallbladder was some organ we all had vaguely in the vicinity of the digestive system, which produced some digestive substance. Not a bit of it. If you think about it, the clue is in the name. Bladder. Does your bladder produce anything? No. It stores urine. The gallbladder is just a storage facility for bile, and you need bile to digest fat. Now bile itself is produced by the liver via the bile duct, so you don't actually need the gallbladder to function; it's just a useful extra tool.


This is what happens


Scene: The stomach. You have just consumed a Burger King triple bacon cheeseburger with fries and a pint of warm lard


Stomach: Holy shit: YO BRAIN!!
Brain:      Wassup?
Stomach: There's a shitstorm of fat coming my way
Brain:      So?
Stomach   SO? Waddya mean so? So I'm gonna need bile, baby.
Brain        Roger that. I'll tell the liver
Stomach   The liver can't cope with this one on it's own. Send in the big guns - NOW!!
Brain        Jeez, er...OK... hold on...I've got his number somewhere. Let me see...Cranium...Duodenum...Ears..Feet..here we are Gallbladder. YO GALLBLADDER!!
Gallbladder:  Gallbladder here, how may I be of assistance?
Brain:       RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!



























So the gallbladder then dumps it's reservoir of extra bile into the intestine, the extra fat gets digested, and we all go home happy.


Trouble is, the gallbladder has an annoying habit in a large section of the population, of producing little mineral lumps called gallstones. Most of us live with these all through our lives without any ill effects, but sometimes they can get stuck in the ducts leading from the gallbladder, and if they do, then when the gallbladder is called upon to release the hounds, then it can cause a blockage, and the gallbladder tries to squeeze them out, which causes a hideous, classic pain on the right side of the body just below the ribcage, and also sometimes up the back behind the right shoulder blade, maybe in the stomach, and basically, you feel awful and want to rip your innards out.


That Big Mac was a mistake


So anyway. There's the background. Next post coming shortly

Don't you love Waitrose

Went to Waitrose this morning and needed just two thing: Prune juice and toilet paper.

The cashier said, "now that's the definition of optimism."

Smart girl

The most patient people in the world

Lovely sunny autumnal morning so off to Wood Green with the missus to do a bit of shopping.


Here is the missus trying out her state of the art contactless debit card on the card reader.

We go to Lidl. I am yet to be convinced. It always appears to be full of lower orders shuffling about in nighties, dragging around their hideous screaming earring babies, munching on Marlboro flavoured crisps, but that's probably just my ridiculous snobbish prejudices.

Anyway, we then go to a series of small corner-type shops to pick up bits and pieces and I am struck by a new universal law of cornershop shopkeepers which is you must be mumbling into a mobile phone tucked under your chin when ringing up purchases. Not only that, the person on the other end must have the patience of a shedload of saints, or possibly be comatose, as the conversation seems to last indefinitely, and is interrupted every 20-30 seconds by the annoying customers

Hold on Mr President..."That'll be £3.47 mate"

St Mary at Hill

Having nothing better to do, went with a couple of friends to this lovely church in the city for a lunch time concert.

Here is the interior

Look no pews!

It's great: just a beautiful big open space. This time of year there is always a celebration of fish


Here is a picture of fish, in case you don't know what they look like

So it was with great excitement that I entered the church, hoping for something like this on display

Hi there! Welcome to the St Mary at Hill Harvest of the Sea display. This is Blodwyn and I am Candice


Unfortunately the actual fish display is next week and will be more like this apparently

What did you expect? A couple of mermaids??


Still the concert was GREAT. A choir of eight accompanied by a thundering great organ.

Handbag

There are some expressions that fill me with terror, or make me incensed, or both. Amongst these are:

'Come round for supper - bring a game!'

"Have you heard the good news?"

'Look, I only had lamb tikka and rice, and a diet Coke. Here's a fiver -
sorry - got to catch the last tube.'

'He won't bite - he's only playing!'

'Now you'll want the extended warranty with those Post-it notes sir.'

But the one that is currently top of my fear-factor scale is
as follows:

Me 'where are the sweeteners?'

Missus 'They're in my handbag'

Me (nervously) 'can you get them for me?'

Missus 'They are right there: Look in my handbag'

Gentle reader, are there more bloodcurdling words than 'Look in my handbag'?

I don't want to go in there. It's big and smelly and dark and unfathomable.. There are things in there I should not need to know about. There are things in there no man should be subjected to. So you have a tentative root around. Things jangle. Some are squidgy. Some are sharp. Some leave smeary makeup type deposits on your hands. And many tissues, which don't get me wrong, I do sometimes find useful. She always carries enough tissues with her to soak up Lake Baikal.

Are you sure they're in here?

And ten minutes later, when you finally get to the bottom of the bag and start collecting bits under your fingernails, she says, 'Don't bother: I've got them here: could you just pass me that old tissue please?' (Shudder)


Picture of my missus' handbag and one of the unusual objects I found in it once.