My mom had hers removed in her 20s, and she has a giant scar across her belly.
Be glad for laproscopy. 
My mother had hers out in her late 30s and my father just had his burst, landing him in the hospital for 2 weeks- not fun. With that kind of history I’m tempted to get mine out now and save myself the trouble later on.
t-keela, fight my ignorance Pass from…which orifice?
That would be the butt, Elfkin477
I had my gallbladder removed when I was 24. I had recently been doing the Jenny Craig diet and gone off of it spectacularly as I was visiting a friend in another city. I learned years later that Jenny Craig had settled a class action lawsuit in which they accepted responsibility for the fact that their diet had the unintentional consequence of causing gallstones.
Pretty much, anytime you drastically cut down on fat in your diet, your bile - which helps digest fat - sits around in your gallbladder, forming stones. Go from low fat to high fat (which I did in the course of one weekend), and all of a sudden, your gallbladder goes nuts from the sudden demands placed on it. Not a happy way to interrupt your vacation.
(Elfkin, to expand on Bippy’s answer, the gallbladder holds bile, which is produced by the liver. It sits quite near the pancreas and has (I believe) some adjacent ducts. When you eat something with fat in it, your gallbladder dumps some bile into your small intestine to help with digestion. If there are stones small enough to pass easily, they would simply go the way of all other matter in your digestive track.)
Interestingly enough, in a TMI way, I can usually keep a pretty good eye on my diet by the color and consistency of my bowel movements. If I’m eating a lot of fatty foods, there isn’t enough bile to aid in digestion, so . . . things float. If I’m very low fat, then there’s lots of orangey-yellow bile. Everybody grossed out now?
I thought floating meant lots of good-for-you fiber, not fat?
The hospital I worked at added another F – add “Fair”
Meaning hair/skin coloring.
I was told of the 4Fs: fat, female, fair, and fertile.
(The nurses were laughing because I was such the stereotype of a gallbladder patient.)
Apparently, it’s quite common for women to have gallbladder problems after giving birth. That’s what happened to me. I gave birth May 12, and had the ol’ gallbladder yanked on July 28.
kidney stones is another thing, ouch…however.
The correct answer has already been posted. Yes, via the anus, feces frequently contains small “stones” which you may sometimes feel. (gross I know) but relevant. It is due to calcium build up the the gall bladder. My wife suffered from pigment stones which is due to excessive dead red blood cells. A side effect of her MD. They are usually small and exit your gall bladder into your digestive system where they wind up in the toilet. Remember that “peanut” you felt…well odds are it wasn’t a peanut. Unless of course you had just eaten a bunch of peanuts.
Cut way back on the fat you consume. Drinks two or three glasses of apple juice everyday for a month. Then at least a glass every day after that. It worked for my wife.
OR get it cut out.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened to me (although Iwasn’t on vacation at the time). I’d lost some weight doing an ultra-low fat diet, but then when I stopped dieting I went, well, whole hog (heh). I also fit the Fat, Fertile, Female and Fair profile.
The gallbladder problem is the reason that, after bariatric surgery, you have to take gallbladder medication for six months. The rapid weight loss is the reason, no matter what the age.
I had surgery in June of this year at age 21, just over a year after giving birth. They let me keep the biggest stone which is in a tiny plastic container on my desk. The rest of the stones were embedded in the various ducts and things, lining, etc. of my gallbladder which, before the doctors actually got inside, they thought were polyps. My surgeon actually said it was “nasty” when they cut the gallbladder open (no bile, just a mucus-like substance described to me in one word by my surgeon: “snot”).
After about 2 hours in the OR, it was over. Coming out of it was surreal though. I woke up while I was being wheeled to the recovery center. My legs were still restrained and I felt very disoriented and scared. I remember crying and saying, “I want to see my mom” a lot. My arms were flying all over the place and I kept trying to take everything off; blood pressure cuff, heart monitor, things like that. I’m told I stopped breathing a couple times, and I may or may not have struck a nurse but my surgeon assured me at my two week checkup that it was all just fine. I’m still pretty embarrassed by it even though I have no reason to be. That’s not typical, I don’t think. I stayed up pretty much all night prior to surgery though, which is really a bad idea.
Anyway, I’d asked my surgeon about the 3Fs at one of our pre-op meetings. I’m not fat (not… <ahem> not really), I’m certainly not 40, I have dark hair and eyes. So I’m female and fertile, but we were only talking about the Fat, Female, Forty at that time. Clearly that’s not entirely true. I also asked him about gallbladder cancer because we still thought I had polyps, and that’s when he mentioned the 70+, usually male, crowd. So I suspect more than a few people confuse the two.
Good luck with the insurance thing, and I second finding a program funded by the state. If you’re approved, they should pay everything starting from the day you submitted your application so your ER visits likely aren’t going to be covered. You will, of course, have to check with your area to be sure, but this is definitely something you need to take care of ASAP.
I have to make a correction here - gallstones are usually caused by cholesterol and sometimes bilirubin. It is the kidney stones that are composed of calcium.
Adding “Fair” the typical patient profile is interesting to me, as statistically speaking, minorities are far more prone to gallbladder disease than caucasians. Also “fat” in and of itself does not predispose one to gallbladder problems as much as the things that fat people do, as have been named in the thread, like wildly varying the amount of fat they’re consuming in their diets, playing havoc upon their digestive systems.
I got my final statement from the hospital yesterday. Just under $8700. :eek:
Glad I don’t have to pay that! That’s almost as much as my delivery, drugs, baby care, and hospital stay combined!
I had my gallbladder out when I was just shy of 32 years. My problem was poor function, rather than stones. And OUCH!! those attacks are SO painful! Even my ribs hurt!
My younger sister was only days past her 20th birthday when hers had to come out. She had stones–and for a long time before she was finally diagnosed. (When she was in the hospital, there was a 7 year old having the same surgery!) Our doctors (from two different states) said that having Native American ancestry was a contributing factor–even though it is a very small percentage of our heredity!
Oh, and torie? If they haven’t told you yet, you are liable to suffer from locked bowels after this procedure. Unfortunately, they will be locked OPEN. 
For several months, I couldn’t even finish a meal before I had to find a bathroom–and quickly! Even now, six years later, this still happens, though not as often anymore. But for a while there, I thought they had connected my stomach directly to my rectum! :eek:
That is exactly right Zyada I knew that didn’t sound right when I posted it. Don’t know how I got the two confused, sorry.
Bilirubin is the pigment in red blood cells, thus the bilirubin=pigment stone reference. Muscular Dystrophy, specifically Myotonic Dystrophy (my wife and daughter) destroys red blood cells in muscle tissue.
I second this. I had my gallbladder out at a very young age too. It was a couple of months before I turned nineteen. It makes the digestive system go quite wacky for a bit there. I was not warned about this either. My gallstones (I had a bunch of little ones; the doctors described my gallbladder as like a bean bag, and there were stones in the various ducts as well) decided to stage their little uprising while I was weakened from mono. I fit the profile except that I’m not so sure about being fertile. The only part that really bothered me about being in the hospital was the IVs.
I third the unlocked bowel thing. I had mine out last summer (I was 26) and since then let me just say I haven’t had a lot of trouble with constipation. My dad warned me about this before hand. He basically said don’t eat fatty meals or you’ll pay. I don’t know the science behind it but from what I’ve witnessed, he was right.