Right, hoping the collected wisdom can talk me down before I spiral. Sleeved last November, down about four stone, feeling brilliant, no complaints at all until Thursday.
Had a slightly bigger night than usual, mate's birthday, and I ordered a curry, ate maybe a third of it (which for me is a feast now). About an hour, hour and a half later, this PAIN arrived under my right ribs. Not a sharp stab, more like a fist slowly squeezing, and it climbed round towards my right shoulder blade of all places. Sat there for a good couple of hours, felt a bit sick with it, then just... faded. Was fine by bedtime.
Now, 3am me has of course decided the sleeve is leaking or the staple line has gone or something dramatic. But the daytime version of me remembers reading somewhere that fast weight loss and gallstones go together, and the "after a fatty meal" bit is nagging at me. Anyone had this? Is the right SHOULDER thing normal for gallbladder? And does it mean I'm heading for another operation, because I did not sign up for a sequel.
Alan W said:
like a fist slowly squeezing, and it climbed round towards my right shoulder blade
Alan, that description could be lifted straight out of my own diary from year one. The squeeze-not-stab, the timing after a fattier meal, the daft right shoulder thing. That was my gallbladder, textbook.
Mine grumbled on and off for a few months, always after anything rich, always that same climbing ache into the shoulder. A scan found a couple of stones. In the end I had the gallbladder out, keyhole, home the same day, and honestly it was a breeze compared to the sleeve, I barely noticed the recovery. So please don't picture another sleeve-sized ordeal.
What I'd gently push back on is the 3am leak theory: a leak is an early thing, days and weeks after surgery, not seven months out feeling brilliant. This has the gallbladder fingerprints all over it. But I'm a woman on a forum, not your team, so get it looked at properly rather than taking my word.
Adding a data point: my surgeon actually put me on those "urso" tablets (ursodeoxycholic acid) for six months after surgery specifically to stop stones forming, said it was routine for their sleeve patients. So some teams are already thinking about this before it happens. Worth asking if you were ever offered them, and if the pain comes back, whether a scan is the next step. I never had an attack, so I can't speak to that bit, but the whole gallstone risk was definitely on my team's radar from day one.
Alan, I'll give you the straight answer first: what you are describing is far more consistent with a gallstone attack than with anything wrong with the sleeve itself, and it is one of the most common calls we get from patients around the six to twelve month mark.
The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains every detail you noticed. Losing weight quickly changes the make-up of bile: the liver tips more cholesterol into it, and on small post-sleeve portions the gallbladder empties less often, so stones form more readily. Up to around a third of people develop gallstones in the first year or so after rapid weight loss, though most stay silent and never cause a thing. When one does cause trouble, it is classically because a stone briefly blocks the gallbladder outlet after a fatty meal, which is exactly why yours came on an hour after a curry. That gripping, squeezing quality (we call it biliary colic), lasting from a few minutes up to several hours and then settling, and the ache spreading to the right shoulder blade, are the textbook picture. The site's guide to gallstones after a gastric sleeve walks through the whole thing. Donna is also right that a staple-line leak is an early complication measured in days, not something that appears at seven months in someone thriving, so you can retire that particular 3am theory.
Now the conditions and the exceptions, because "probably gallstones" is not the same as "ignore it". This needs a proper look, usually a GP review and an ultrasound scan, to confirm stones and rule out other causes of upper-right pain. A single self-limiting episode is a book-an-appointment matter, not an emergency. But some symptoms change the urgency entirely: a high temperature or shivering, yellowing of the skin or the whites of the eyes, pale stools or dark urine, or pain that is severe and simply will not settle can mean a stone has lodged in the bile duct or the gallbladder is inflamed, and those are same-day, go-and-be-seen situations, not wait-for-the-GP ones. As for the sequel you're dreading: if the stones keep causing attacks, the usual treatment is removing the gallbladder by keyhole surgery, which is genuinely one of the most routine operations there is and, as Donna found, a far gentler experience than the sleeve. Plenty of people with silent stones never need anything done at all. Get the scan, take the tablets to your appointment if you were prescribed any, and let your own team put your name to a plan.
Update for the record and for anyone who finds this at 3am like I nearly did. GP listened to the story, said "curry then right shoulder, hm" almost before I'd finished, sent me for an ultrasound. Two small stones, gallbladder otherwise behaving. Plan is to see if it settles now I'm eating more carefully, operation on the table only if the attacks keep coming. Massive relief that it's a known, boring thing and not the disaster my brain had scripted. Thank you all, and Tracey I've written "ASK ABOUT URSO" on a Post-it out of pure spite that nobody offered me any.
Reading this from the soft-food stage with great interest and mild dread. So the very success of the thing (losing fast) is what stirs up the stones. Filing that away. I'm the sort who'd absolutely diagnose myself with something terminal after the first twinge, so knowing the after-a-fatty-meal, climbs-to-the-shoulder pattern in advance is oddly calming. Adding it to my growing cupboard-door collection of things this forum warned me about and the leaflets didn't.
