Haven't had it done, but I almost did, about 10 years ago. I had been getting a dull but persistent pain in my side that didn't go away, and I finally went to see my doctor, a blunt Italian I had been seeing since I was 15. He gave me a quick, cursory examination, and said, "Your gall bladder needs to come out." That freaked me out a bit, because (No. 1) I did not like surgery (I had almost bled to death having a bone cyst removed once) and (No. 2) I had no idea what a gall bladder actually was, and (No. 3) I felt I was way too young to contemplate being deprived of mine, whatever the hell its purpose was supposed to be. A short while later, I was sent to a medical center where they lathered up my abdomen with some sort of gell and ran the kind of x-ray device over me that they normally seem to use with pregnant women. All the while, the technician kept saying, "I can't see anything wrong. I just don't see anything wrong." Which filled me with some relief, but still perplexed me. When I returned to my regular doctor, he said, "You have a bruised rib." A bit chagrined, I asked, "How did I bruise my rib?" The doctor looked up from the report he was reading and brusquely replied, "How the fuck do I know how you bruised it?" (I liked the guy...he had made some good diagnoses over the years, but...like I said...he was blunt, sometimes offensively so). To placate me, I guess, he gave me a script for Vicodin (it worked; I was placated). All these years later, I still don't know what a gall bladder is for, but at least I still have one.

I had mine out last summer at the age of 22 after a year of attacks,I was embarrassed to go to the doctor at first because I thought it was indegestion,the attacks lasted up to 12 hours and where horrific,I had them every  time i eat fried fatty foods.finally i went to a doctor on campus and he patted my stomach and said it was an ulcer,finally sometime later I went to the ER and they did a songram and found stones in my gall bladder and then tried to do it laparascopically,but my gall bladder fell apart while they did it so I had to wear a tube for a week or so,all in all it was not bad,the attacks where the worst part,and not knowing what it was.

i had this done when i was 23 years old. it was such a relief not to have the stomach pains i had prior. i was in the hospital for two days and i now have a scar that runs across my stomach but it was worth getting rid of the pain.

I recently had my gallbladder removed through laparoscopic surgery, which can be done without cutting the muscles of your abdomen. I received (2) 1 incisions and (2) 1/4 incisions. The recovery time is less than a week and the pain is minimal. Prior to the surgery the pain from the gallbladder attacks was horrible. The signs are classic, lower abdominal pain, usually right side running into the back and hurting into the shoulder blades.