There are times when you hurt so bad, dying would be a relief. Or, as a line from Harry Potter, "There are worse things than death." Someone who has never been in agonizing pain and gut misery with no hope of relief doesn't understand that that can be a worse fate than death. Just ask my great-uncle who lived with Crohn's for years. He was in his early 20's when it first appeared and he lived to be 80 or 81. He had sections of his colon removed, he had a calcified and non-functioning kidney before he died. The man hurt most of his life.
I don't ever recall an itching sensation. It could be your body's unique reaction to pain (some sort of stress reaction--have you ever noticed hives or similar when under a lot of stress?), could be a reaction to some medicine you are on (including vitamins or supplements, which you might be mildly allergic to), or could be totally unrelated to your gut problem all together. As I tell people on here all the time, nothing says you can't have more than one thing wrong with you at a time.
I knew it was my GB too--for nearly 5 years. Everyone in my family knew it was my GB, because they all had the same symptoms. But you've got to convince a doctor of that so he can approve your surgery and get your insurance to pay for it. Otherwise it's about $12,000 out of pocket, if you can even get a surgeon who will do it.
Now there would be a funny doctor's visit.
You: Doctor, I know my gall bladder is bad. You tell me why you think it is not bad.
Doctor: Your test didn't show it was bad.
You: Are those tests 100% accurate? Do they never make mistakes?
Doctor: Um, well any test can make a mistake.
You: So, you would look at symptoms independently of a test just in case, right?
Doctor: Yes.
You: And do my symptoms not align with a bad gall bladder?
Doctor: Well, some do.
You: Here's a copy of a nursing manual I got at a library. I've highlighted my symptoms in yellow that are listed in the book. Pretty much all of them are there, aren't they?
Doctor: Yes, looks that way.
You: So I have all of the symptoms of a bad gall bladder according to medical books. Yet one test said my gall bladder was fine. Do you think maybe the test made a mistake? Do you think we should take it out on a hunch? I mean, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. It hurts like a gall bladder and makes me sick like a gall bladder, so why should we not assume it's probably a gall bladder? Shouldn't we at least get me another test? At the very least, even if you will not admit that it's my gall bladder, I need to be put on a program to control the pain, diarrhea and nausea. I'm not leaving here without a game plan and some medicines, because "go home and suffer like a dog that needs to be shot" is not an option. If you won't test my gall bladder again, lets do a food allergy test and a breathalyzer to look for bad bacteria build up. Let's do a stool check for anything in there that shouldn't be in there. Let's control the symptoms and look for the root of the problem until we've exhausted all possibilities twice over, because I'd really rather not live on medicine forever.
You can either go that way, and berate your doctor into doing something, or you can go the solo route and keep to yourself and foreswear doctors until it gets so bad they can't help but find it. I did the latter because I was in college and a foreign country when mine was acting up, so I didn't have a regular doctor that I could harass with constant visits and questions until he accomplished something. I mean, you are paying this man--a lot of money, in fact. He's a business man, the same as a mechanic. Now, he knows less about the human body than a mechanic knows about cars, but he could at least appear to earn his pay by testing and re-testing until you're so tired of testing that YOU will give up and just limp along on meds.
Welchol is in the same family as Questran (your powder), so it does the same thing. The only benefit is that Welchol is a pill, not a powder, so it's easier to use, and MANY people complain that Questran gives them bad gas and/or cramps; Welchol does not seem to have that side effect in anyone I've ever talked to. I and my mother-in-law both have no side effects at all from it (other than I have to take a multi-vitamin to compensate for the loss of some fat-soluable vitamins, which can't be absorbed when you have bile problems).