Re: "The ducts cannot expand that far..."

Do you realize how old someone has to be before they stones get hard and solidify into soft balls?

First of all the stones do not harden in to "soft balls".  That whole statement is a contradiction.

Secondly, the physical age of the person has nothing to do with it.  Real gallstones get larger and harden with time, not get bigger and soft and squishy.  Real calcified stones can happen in younger people as well.  Again they just take several years to grow to any appreciable size, which is why it is impossible for those large globs people are passing every few days or weekly to be real gallstones.

To show you what I mean about a person's physical age having nothing to do with it I am posting some case studies for you.  Note this first case is in a 20 year old women who has been dealing with real gallstones for 2 years.  As we can see gallstones are not strictly an elderly issue:

http://bestpractice.bmj.com/best-practice/monograph/78/diagnosis/case-history...

Also note that in this case the stone had lodged in the bile duct.  This occurs with larger, hard gallstones.  Not with sludge or tiny, squishy gravel.

Another case in a 39 year old male:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3527908?uid=3739824&uid=2129&ui...

In a 7 1/2 year old child:

http://www.jpgmonline.com/article.asp?issn=0022-3859;year=1987;volume=33;issu...

And this does not make them extremely common either.  Real gallstones are somewhat common, but larger stones the size of a quarter or larger are really not that common.  Yet these people passing what they think are gallstones are passing these blobs sometimes every few days.  As both of us agree though real gallstones CANNOT grow this fast, which is even more solid proof that the blobs are saponified olive oil, not real gallstones.  This is what I cannot understand.  Your own claims are proof that what people are passing are not real gallstones, yet you keep insisting that they are.  For example, once again as real gallstones slowly grow they calcify making them hard.  So real gallstones of any significant size will be hard as a rock, not soft and rubbery.

Granted gallstones are less likely in children, still they can occur in people from young to old.  So they do not take many decades to grow as you are claiming.