Jen,
I am one who ended up having my gall bladder removed (2/2010). It was not because of stones, but just that it was dead/atrophied/scarred/etc. My ejection fraction was a mere 8%.
Then, about 6 months after my gall bladder was removed, the pain was back. Huh? I don’t have a gall bladder anymore, so what could it be? It took another 18 months to get a DX. My bile duct was also going bad! Well, more specifically, the Sphincter of Oddi was malfunctioning. It is what opens and closes to let bile into the small intestine. Mine was causing abnormally high pressure in the bile duct (this took a special pressure test, manometry)that was causing my pain. I had to travel to another state to have the test done as it is rare enough it is only done a few places in the US. The treatment is to cut open this opening to keep it open.
It took me longer to heal/recover than “normal”, but that is always true with me (and probably everyone else here, right?), but finally about a month after the surgery I was pain free in my upper right quadrant for the first time in years!
All that to get to my own little vagel nerve theory, and that is that if the nerve is not able to send and receive signals correctly I believe this is what lead to my gall bladder just kind of dying an early death and then also my bile duct malfunctioning in a way that caused those high painful pressures in it.
It is too late for me, at least as far as my gall bladder is concerned, but I would have loved to have had my vagal nerve decompressed and the ctyokines treated FIRST before resorting to surgery, to see if the gall bladder might come back from the dead if the signals were returned to normal.
Hope that made some kind of sense. =)