For those of you following my holiday-gallbladder story, here's the latest... It's been almost two weeks since surgery and I'm feeling great. I'll have four visible scars on my stomach, the worst being inside, and under, my bellybutton. I imagine it's pretty darn hard to make sure the bellybutton is lined up properly when putting the incision back together. Now all I have is just a few more weeks of "taking it easy" and I'll be back to normal. I've already been eating almost normally, so I'm getting back on track quite well.
Today I received my hospital bill for the surgery. The total was 18k and some change. Yes, eighteen thousand dollars. And to think, over a million gallbladder surgeries are performed a year - which makes that an $18,000,000,000 industry. That's nuts.
What's more nuts is that doesn't even take into effect the gallbladders that are then sold on eBay, the black market, and in your local classified ads. There has to be a gallbladder fetish out there somewhere with millionaires dying to spend a large chunk of change to get a used gallbladder...or something. Freaks.
+ original post date: January 17, 2004 09:53 PM
+ categories: I Have No Gallbladder
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