has anyone been told this?

I haven't personally been told this by a doc, but I have heard it from a friend who sees a chiropractor. Also, Keri (another member) can speak to this. She has had first hand experience with this type of radiating pain. Hopefully she'll be on shortly.

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Oh, I forgot to tell you that, given the pain that you are in (regardless of your bowel issues, you should not have pain once your gall bladder is out, at least not high up like that), you need to talk to your surgeon about it. It is possible that your bile duct was damaged when they took your gall bladder out. Or, if you had stones, you may have had a stone lodged in the duct when they took your GB out and it's still there. You need to talk to your surgeon about this lingering pain and see if he thinks it might be a surgical problem. I guess it's even possible to develop scar tissue that causes problems (and thus pain) or is even painful in and of itself.

When my gall bladder was bad, I would hurt up into my right shoulder and down to my right elbow and across my diaphram, so yes, GB pain can radiate to most anywhere in your upper torso.

Also, have you tried anti-gas meds? Gas can often get trapped under the rib cage and hurt into the back and chest. I know when I had my GB that I had a hard time passing gas for some reason and would get bad gas cramps. It may be that you have a similar problem and that's the cause of your upper torso pains.

I don't really know what you mean by "oily", but the yellow is a sign of excess bile--in your case caused by not have a GB.

If you are concerned about malabsorption, which can happen in people with too much diarrhea and--I had one dr tell me (though not my g.i.)--people on Welchol, just get an OTC vitamin supplement. Not one of those with 1,000% of your daily allowance for all of the ingredients--excess consumption like that just means your kidneys have to work harder filtering and expelling the excess--one with 100% or so of everything is good enough.

You might want to see if you know someone who can recommend another surgeon and ask for a second opinion on the liklihood that you have surgical damage or scar tissue that's causing your pain. I'm afraid I don't know the stats on how often a GB removal can be botched, so I don't know if that's a long shot or not.