Mama Lost Her Gall Bladder in Turkey

“Mama, why aren’t you eating the naan and kebab?”

“Don’t you remember? She lost her gall bladder in Turkey!”

“Ohh… right…”

I honestly can’t tell you how many times this conversation was repeated among our kids during our first term. It began as a tongue-in-cheek way to tell our kids that mom couldn’t eat the same way anymore because she no longer had a gallbladder. But it took on a life of its own that eventually had us concerned that our third-culture kids might grow up thinking that people simply lose their gallbladders when they travel – like they might misplace some toy – rather than having them surgically removed. Don’t underestimate the things that can get missed in a TCK upbringing. Until I was sixteen, I thought that spaghetti was grown on farms.

The whole gallbladder saga came about quite unexpectedly. We needed to take a medical trip to Istanbul, Turkey, a year and a half after arriving on the field. There, we would visit a network of hospitals called Acibadem for our needed shots and checkups. Because of these shots, our family came to call this hospital “Ouchy Bottom.”

Before any of our medical work was done, we decided to spend a week of rest in a historic island town near Istanbul where no cars were allowed. It was a good, if very humid, week, dragging our toddlers all over the island. If you are ever traveling somewhere with toddlers where cars are not permitted, always be sure to check that your Airbnb is not a long walk uphill. Also, Turks, unlike our desert people group, seem to think that AC and ice water will make you sick, so these are not nearly as readily available as one might hope in a sweltering July.

During our week there, our daughter accidentally head-butted my wife in the eye, leaving her with quite the shiner – swollen, puffy, and dark purple. I had a lot of people give me the stink eye on ferries and around town that week, thinking that I had something to do with this. I didn’t know enough Turkish to point out the true culprit – the adorable little girl with the pigtails.

All good things must come to an end, and at the end of the week, we left the charming yet sweaty island and moved over to the mainland to commence with the medical work. The kids got their shots and my wife went in for an abdominal ultrasound, something a doctor had ordered out of an abundance of caution. While the area the ultrasound was supposed to focus on proved to be fine, the tech had also accidentally/providentially pointed it at the gall bladder area. So, we were informed that there were some pretty serious gallstones there and that surgery would be necessary.

One of the strange contrasts between Turkey and our area of Central Asia is that while Turkey is much more developed and modern, and there’s a lot of Western music playing everywhere, there’s a lot less knowledge of English in the general and professional population. The doctors had good English, but to our surprise, the rest of the nurses and hospital staff didn’t. In one sense, good on them for being so confident as a people in their language. But in an age of medical tourism, this can sometimes mean things get lost in translation – like entire organs.
In the consultation, the doctor told us the medical term for the procedure he would do, called a cholecystectomy. Then he blitzed through the scheduling and recovery pieces. My wife and I, having very limited experience with medical gall bladder terminology, thought that this cholecystectomy surgery must entail simply removing the gall stones. We had no idea it meant removing the entire organ. Our Google Translate conversations with the hospital staff didn’t clear this up for us either. Everyone assured us that we were in store for a very simple and normal procedure.

So, a couple of mornings later, the kids and I said goodbye to our wife and mother in her blue hospital gown and shower cap, still sporting her black eye.

After several hours, the doctor told me that the procedure was complete and that I could come and be with my wife when she woke up from the anesthesia.

“Mr. Workman, the surgery was a great success!” the doctor enthusiastically told me as I walked into the room. “Would you like to see the organ?”

“The organ?”

“Yes! I have it in a jar and can show it to you if you like.”

“The stones?”

“The gall bladder, of course, with the stones too. Everything went perfectly according to plan!”

I took a moment to absorb what the jovial doctor had just said. They had taken out the whole thing.

“Oh, right… Um, no, I don’t think I need to see the organ. Thank you.”

“Please excuse me for a moment,” the doctor continued. “Your wife should be waking up any minute now.”

I went over to sit by my wife and thought about the best way to break the news to her. I could let the doctor do it. But no, that was not likely to go well. The doctor was acting far too cavalier for that. I’d better do my best to break it to her gently, but directly.

A few minutes later she stirred, blinking back into consciousness.

“Hey, love!” I said in a low voice, smiling.

“Hey…”

“How are you feeling?”

“Mmm… Okay, I guess.”

“Well, the doctor said the surgery went great. No issues whatsoever.”

The moment she had come. I had to tell her. I took a deep breath.

“But… they had to take out the whole gall bladder.”

My wife rolled her eyes over to look at me.

“They what?”

“Yeah, they took the whole thing out. I guess that was their plan all along.”

We both sat there in that hospital room, registering what this meant and wondering how in the world we had missed something like the nature of the surgery itself. In the days that followed, we learned that this had indeed been the medically necessary thing to do, which brought some relief. Still, had we known they were planning on removing an entire organ we would have at least done some more research about alternatives or how this surgery might affect the rest of someone’s life.
In the years since, not having a gall bladder has indeed had a drastic effect on what my wife can and can’t eat, meaning we’ve added that particular organ to our growing list of things we look forward to being made new in the coming resurrection. We do laugh about how it all went down, but it’s laughter tinged with some sadness also. Our bodies were meant to have functioning gallbladders to help us enjoy the great variety of God’s good foods. Now my wife’s was gone, perhaps still in a jar somewhere in Istanbul, another casualty of the fall.
Despite being the place where we lost Mama’s gall bladder, we still love Turkey. An extraordinary part of my calling occurred during a prayer meeting in 2008. My wife and I spent a couple of wonderful days there during our first vision trip to Central Asia as newlyweds. Where else can you can drink chai on a ferry as the sun sets on the Bosphorus, watching the light play on the spires and even more ancient domes of the Hagia Sophia? Or drink some good Japanese cold brew in historic Chalcedon?
Yes, despite misadventures like this one, part of our hearts will always be in Turkey. And now, one of our gallbladders also.