gallbladder surgery

I am a 26 year old female 16wks pregnant. I had my gallbladder removed 3weeks ago this wednesday. they left in but clamped off my bile tube. Every thing else is healing fine but the tube is causing a lot of pain for me. Inside and out. I have a lot of mid to lower back pain, stomach pain at the tube sight and it is infected. It hurts me to laugh, cry, cough, or even stand up straight. my surgeon won't give me any answers he just tells me if the tube comes out i will get acute pancreatitis. What is really going on? Is it  really neccessary for the tube to stay in?

Tricia

[CalGal]

Tricia, it sounds as if what they did was insert a T-tube because you were having a bile leak or other problem in the common bile duct - it would be a T-tube that exits and deposits the bile to the outside, or a 'stent' which if left within the common bile duct and doesn't deposit bile to the outside. If it's a stent, they're trying to either close off a bile leak in the common bile duct, or they're trying to stop your bile duct from closing down for some reason.

Your doc is right though. If you can't release bile properly, or if you've got a leak and that bile would end up in the abdominal cavity, it could cause a lot of problems. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait out what's going on.

But talk to your doc again, and ask him to make a couple of drawings so that you can understand what's happening a bit more.