About a year after, I had to see a different physician for insurance purposes. He mentioned that he had, in twenty-eight years of practice, never seen anyone who had gone ahead and spent the time trying to dissolve the stones. I suspect, because removal is the "tonsillectomy of abdominal surgeries," they just all default to yanking it out.
Unfortunately, my gallbladder was at the "104 fever and hydromorphone for pain" level when I landed in the emergency room--choices weren't on the table at that point.
I had been watching my gallbladder for years and I absolutely couldn't pry ursodeoxycholic acid out of any of my doctors as my gallstones "weren't that big". No, they didn't LOOK that big on ultrasound--when my gallbladder was removed they were more than an inch across.
Part of the problem with the modern medical establishment is that anything with a component of more than twice a day or longer than 3 months has an abysmal compliance rate and so they won't give those treatments to anybody--even someone who can demonstrate that they can follow a disciplined schedule for years. And a gallstone treatment regimen takes 12 months before you can even start to see a change.
I think I lucked out in that everything calmed down as soon as the infection was knocked on a bit. That and my doctor was understanding, but I had located an overseas source of Ursodiol if he wouldn't come through.
I've been getting periodic ultrasounds and also some enzyme level checks.
I agree: even the establishment is looking for either a quick fix or a lifetime prescription, but almost nothing between the two extremes. Either, I think, require as little physical time as you can get away with, it's the middle course that is tedious for them.
However, some of this is the fault of the modern medical establishment who want to stop looking and treating at 6-12 months if you don't have something mainstream diagnosable. And "Lyme" was the medical establishment dumping ground for a lot of those people--the modern equivalent to "hysteria".
In addition, modern medicine is finding that there are physiological after effects to lots of diseases even once the primary disease is cured. This is unsurprising (look at the aftereffects of polio and rubella, for example), but doesn't really seem to get discussed much since medicine can't really do anything if a virus damages nerves, for example.
(As someone who had to have his gallbladder removed, this infuriated me. I couldn't get anyone to give me any treatment for gallstones other waiting to remove my gallbladder. And, once it was removed, any digestive complications afterward were just "sucks to be you". Um, sure, the alternative was death, but is it really a "treatment" if a significant chunk of people have negative lifestyle implications afterward? And why aren't we looking for a better actual treatment? Preferably one that doesn't involve ripping out body chunks?)
However, blowing off a significant subset of people who have real symptoms is part of the reason why alternative medicine continues to have such a following in spite of the fact that it doesn't actually work.