h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

for MR.

for Sol and for MR

for Sol and for MR

Lil, you're getting ahead of yourself .

Just home from a dence club with my cousin. I ran into a few friends there. I have decided to put aside my long time dislike for the gothic sub-culture and try to learn to like that music. That will allow me to hang out with some more friends with less discomfort.

Hope it goes well for you MR. A friend has had it done just very recently and I must get in touch and see how she's doing.

MR. Although I think it looks more like a Skip (UK type of crisp) than a four leaf clover, but there you go.
Oh and Phil, I have not long finished MacCarthy's Bar, in preparation for my trip to Oireland next month. It is a very funny book. Enjoy.

I did my best, Munchers . If your Skips are green they may be past their sell-by date.

Good luck MR< I'm just looking up cholecystectomy in my new book on surgery. (It's all a bit like assembly instructions, cut here, sew flap A to Tab B )

Laproscopic Cholecytestomies are quite common these days, they're even routine on the NHS which still routinly prostate removal and nephrectomies by open surgery in some hospitals. So I'm sure you'll be fine.... really.. apparently the mortality is "well below 1%"

OOoh and would Phil or Munchers be interested in doing a review of Macarthys bar for the bookworms review in

If you just submit a few words to A1042859 well a few hundrend words to be honest..

Good luck MR. But what happens when you don't have a gallbladder? What does it do?

Sol, what did you do to your neck?

MR, I had my gallbladder out two years ago. I went into the hospital at 5:00 am and was home by 2:00 pm the same day. I only stayed off work for a week. I could have gone back sooner, but we have stairs at the library. As long as you don't lift anything heavy for the first month or 6 weeks, there's really nothing to worry about. (I cleaned my Mom's birdbath too soon and pulled something, so don't do that. )

D'e the gallbladder stores and concentrates bile, but you can survive easily without it. Bile is made in the liver, and then goes to the gallbladder when you're not eating, when you eat a fatty meal it is released from the gallbladder and into the gut.

Bile is simalar to washing up liquid, - it breaks down fat by making it water soluable. If you don't have a gallbladder then it just trickles continuously into the gut from the liver, apparently you do fine wihout it. Evidently or we wouldn't have Hypathia <-- not used that one yet.

My mother's gall bladder ruptured and she nearly died of it. She had been to the doctors every day for a week and he told her there was nothing wrong; she made an appointment to get a second opinion and the day before it was set it burst. She was in the hospital for about a week and has a very very large scar, but other than that she survived.

What's wrong with your neck, Sol?

All this talk of surgery and the gall bladder makes you realise that the human being still needs improvements. Certain inefficiencies in the design.

And let's not even talk about the built-in obsolescence.

I always think of the existence of gall bladders, wisdom teeth, to some extent prostates, and appendixs as proof of the lack of intellegent design! They don't kill us before we have children, (OK appendicies do sometimes but rarely) so there isn't any advantage in getting rid of then.)

Incidently appendixes are removed from astronauts before they go into space..

So many areas of the world are already over-populated today, with not enough resources - what would Mother Nature do if we did manage to perfect the human body, or found a cure for everything? And is a long life necessarily happier than a shorter one?

Titania, I haven't got answers for any of those questions. But maybe if the human race hadn't transcended natural selection a few centuries ago ... and another millenium went by ... the people with a genetic disposition to wonky gall bladders or exploding appendices -- or acute tonsilitis, for that matter -- would have been culled from the population.

And THEN what?

Humm well true, but most people aren't that philoscopical when it's their obselete organ that seems to be threatening to kill them...

anyay if that was true my dad will be right in saying that my degree is a glorified form of hairdressing and the local tech

sorry at should = and.

Not that hairdressing isn't a valid career option, *strokes new hair cut with pleasure*

Oh and I missed mentioning it yesterday, welcome autumn (spring for any southern hemisphere salonistas (raises glass for Loony, , glug)). I noticed last night on the calender that yesterday (sept 23) was the autumnal equinox where the sun crosses the celestial equator from north to south. It was also mightily cold walking to the train station yesterday as well but a lovely clear sky (as was last night, I could see for millions of years )