Bile Ducts

The bile produced in your liver has somewhere to go. It travels through a delicate system of channels — small ducts that join into larger ones, until they converge as a single stream into the duodenum, doing their work there: breaking down fats, making food digestible, guiding the old out. The bile ducts are transport channels. Pipes. Pathways.

When these pathways become irritable, they contract. When they become inflamed, they throb. When they block, what wanted to flow begins to build up. The pain sits on the right under the ribcage, sometimes radiating into the shoulder, sometimes with a yellowing of the skin, sometimes with a nausea that won't go away. Medically, we speak of cholangitis, choledocholithiasis, strictures, primary sclerosing cholangitis. In plain language: the pathways are blocked.