I was struck by this surely entirely unoriginal thought an hour or so ago, as I sat in Addenbrooke’s waiting for an ultrasound.
All gentlemen will be familiar with the urinal choice algorithm. The same one applies when choosing where to sit in a waiting room: your goal is to position yourself as far away from everyone else as you can. As a behavioural pattern, I guess you’d call it something like the Pisson Distribution. Haha, I so funny.
Anyway, my ultrasound. No, I’m not pregnant, and yes, the man with the magic wand had heard them all before so I didn’t bore him with another lame gag. Entirely as expected, I’m cultivating a couple of stones in my gallbladder.
The larger is about 11mm across, occupying a throne near the top of the gallbladder and apparently doing a grand job of blocking bile since my gallbladder was pretty much deflated when it should have been full. The smaller stone is about 8mm across and guarding the exit. This is likely the one that’s been giving me gip/jip/gyp for the last few months.
Back to the GP next week to talk about Options. I expect I’ll just ‘ave it out.
Avaragado's blog 
The future
Don’t they have some magical ray that they can beam at the stones that shakes them to pieces? Hacking you open seems so 20th century.
Re: The future
The Surgery 2.0 method uses a couple of keyhole incisions. It’s only when it’s not properly diagnosed early enough – as with my Dad a few years ago – that it requires a more invasive procedure.
Ultrasound Man did say there’s the possibility of some pills to dissolve stones these days. That sounds very Bones McCoy and would undoubtedly be preferable. Sometimes they can use ultrasound to play Asteroids on the stones but that’s not always possible.