I’ll see your gallstone at age 27 and raise you an artificial hip at age 51. I win! Seriously, I went thru the gallstone thing and it is hell. Hope you feel better soon!
Whatabout [sic] a kidney stone at 18? Does that count?
Well, I had shingles at the ripe old age of 20!
I am with kidney stone now (my first, at age 31) and it is periodically the worst pain I have ever had. Stones just weren’t meant to co-exist with the human body.
Pah, I had shingles when I was 11. 
I tell you, Anastaseon, just hearing your story is about enough to get me to change my wicked eating ways! I’m also a fair redhead, fertile and on the pill, and overweight. And I have a phobia of vomiting, so even though you didn’t mention that you were throwing up in addition to your pain, I know that it frequently happens.
Good thing I’m planning on taking charge of my fertility this fall, too!
I hope you feel better soon, and that the diet does the trick.
I had a series of gallstone attacks when in my early 20s. God, they were awful. I went to the hospital from work by ambulance. After the surgury, I was given a laundry list of stuff I shouldn’t eat, but in three months I was ignoring it, and I’ve never had a problem since. Peanut butter topped the list, but it’s never caused a problem.
Ten or 15 years later, my mother had an attack in the middle of the night when she was visiting me in another city. I had to call an ambulance. She didn’t want the surgery so far from home, so they prescribed pain pills and bread-and-water diet, and she was OK until the operation. She told me the day after the attack that the pain hit a new high. Her previous standard was giving birth to me. I didn’t know whether to laugh, be insulted or feel guilty.
I thought I read somewhere that a new treatment is to have the patient sit in a physical-therapy-type tub of water, where low-frequency soundwaves bombard the gall bladder and break up the stones. Maybe that was kidney stones. Or maybe I dreamt it.
And you might hate me for it… but… but…
I passed it. It’s gone. I just came back from my follow-up appointments, and the stone is gone.
I still have to stick to the low fat, plenty of exercise routine, since I’m have a high probability of developing new stones if I’m not careful… but no surgery needed (but we knew that anyway)… nothing. It’s gone.
It’s gone!
The doctor laughed - my father is in the books for having the worst case, he says now I can go in the books for having the shortest case!
I’m stone free!
Grandmama will say it was all that apple juice I’ve been drinking. 
Got a second opinion today, and saw the surgeon. Fer chrissakes. It’s not gone, it’s still there. It’s too damn big to pass.
So, I’ve been told to eat right, exercise, and in about a year, come back for surgery. It has to be removed one way or the other. I can go for a long time being asymptomatic, but the surgeon says my liver makes abnormal bile, and it will always make abnormal bile. So, I will always get stones… which is why most people have their gallbladders removed. In the end, it’s just making trouble.
sigh I love my doctor… but I hate him today. I had my hopes up. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. 
If it sounds too good to be true… :smack:
You have my sympathy. Gallstones are darned unpleasant. I am also insanely jealous that you passed your stone.
I had my gallbladder out at about your age. I was taking classes at the time and it was really not a good time to be going into the hospital, so I managed it with a fat-free diet for several months.
In retrospect, I probably started having symptoms in my late teens. However, no one expects a 19-year-old to have gallstones, so the first attack resulted in a trip to the ER followed by antibiotics on the assumption that the pain was caused by a common cough sexually transmitted cough infection.