When I had my gallbladder removed three and a half years ago, no one asked me, “So, would you like us to suck that out of your vagina?” And thank goodness they didn’t, because I probably would have fainted right there in the doctor’s office and who knows what they would have stuffed up my orifices to revive me?

At the end of March, doctors removed a 66-year-old woman’s gallbladder via her vagina. The procedure avoids abdominal scarring and is supposed to be “less invasive,” though I don’t know what could be more invasive than sticking something up there. It’s part of a developing surgical technique called “natural orifice surgery.” They’ve also been able to remove a man’s appendix via his mouth. Take a minute to visualize that and tell me when you get back from vomiting in the restroom. You back? Okay. It reminds me of the old Egyptian mummification process where they’d remove a corpse’s brains through its nose, only now we can do it on living people without making them candidates for mummification.

Natural [...]

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Chrissie from One Pound at a Time is in the hospital with pancreatitis and gall stones. If you ever read her blog, you might want to pop over to her LiveJournal and give her some love before her surgery Sunday morning.

Speaking as someone who has been without that pesky, malfunctioning little organ known as the gallbladder for over three years now, I can testify that you won’t miss it at all, Chrissie. And you’ll have enough extra room in your body cavity to smuggle baggies of heroin over the border, which will help pay for the hospital stay.

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