You may have another abdominal disorder. Call 911 or go to an emergency facility if you have severe abdominal pain and swelling, fever, chills and nausea, or vomiting. Even if you think your symptoms are getting better, don't wait. You could have peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity. The gallbladder is a small, pear-shaped organ that stores a digestive juice called bile.
Gallstones are hard deposits of cholesterol or bile salts that develop in the gallbladder.
The stones can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball. These attacks, which can last up to several hours, generally occur within an hour or two of eating a large meal or in the middle of the night. Stones in the bile ducts cause severe pain if the duct fails to pass the stone along. For those who have frequent, painful gallstone attacks, the standard treatment is surgery to remove the gallbladder. This procedure is much less invasive than it used to be, with less pain and a quicker recovery.