For any poor soul who is banging their head on their keyboard, this is how you update something in a gallery after it loads from a dataset.
$w.onReady(function () {
$w('#dataset1').onReady(() => {
let items = $w('#gallery1').items
for (let item of items){
if (item.description === '0'){
item.description = 'POA'
let itemNew = item
items.pop(item)
items.push(itemNew)
}
}
$w('#gallery1').items = items;
})
})