Water, Water, and more Water, keep the system flushed out.
I have had between 40 and 50 of them, as big as 13 mm. I have had several lithotripsies, the first with a spinal anaesthetic but awake, the others knocked out. I’ve also had about 5 or so cystoscopies. In our local hospital there is a special room for cystoscopies for stones, that holds the patient in the correct posture, and for some reason there are cardboard duckies and bunnies and kitties and puppies all around the top of the walls. And I had a good old fashioned lithotomy, with a scar about 6" long and a 10 day hospital stay.
A few years ago I was prescribed Polycitra, which is a drug or supplement containing several salts, all citrates I think. This pretty nearly stopped the stones, but I did have trouble with muscle cramping. More recently I was switched to Theralith, a different but related concoction of salts including magnesium citrate. This still seems to prevent the stones, and the cramping is not as bad.
By the way, July 4th marked my 30th anniversary of my first stone, which I passed alone in the attic of a museum on Nantucket island.
Good luck!
Both times were in my twenties. The first kept me in the hospital five days. They were about to operate (no lithotripsy back then) when I passed it. The second time, I was uncomfortable a few hours, went to the hospital and passed it in the ER.
After a stone has passed, you must take antibiotics because infection will set in.
I’ve also had nephritis, an acute inflammation of the kidney, caused by infection. This also feels like a stone. These experiences feel like labor only they last longer and believe me they wear on you.
What? Says who?
No one. I’ve never done it. If you are taking anti-biotics, it isn’t because of the stone.
For me, the worst part was that crawling around or sprawling on the floor made no difference. It didn’t matter whether I stood up straight or curled into a ball, it didn’t matter whether I was on my side or on my back: this wasn’t the kind of pain that prompts you to hunch over and move oh-so-gingerly while keeping the weight off your bad knee and refusing to turn your head even slightly, or whatever. Those were the people I envied. This was an intolerable pain I couldn’t do a thing about.
I’ve had kidney stones and gallstones. Hard to tell which hurt worse; both had me writhing in agony and whining like a broke-dick dog.
I had a triangular one that wedged itself about halfway down the ureter between kidney and bladder. It was not going to pass, certainly through MY delicate penis! Fortunately, we have a top flight kidney stone specialist nearby. My surgery involved sedation and non-invasive sonic blasts that reduced the stone to powder. Sweet relief.
Yikes! That is so definitly not a fun process. I collapsed in the middle of an important presentation (to our GSA auditor, no less) and found myself holding the pointer before me like a holy relic yelling “Jesus, Mary and Joseph have pity on my soul!”
I’m fairly certain they all thought I was suffering from hallucinations. It took me a while to break through my pain and their shock enough to communicate the need for an ambulance. My boss ended up driving me in her car, still confused about what was wrong and whether it was a medical emergency.
To anser your question though. . . On a scale of pain where 1 = stubbed toe, and 10 = praying to die:
Slipped disc 26
Acute appendicitis 10
Kidney stone 9.5
Gall stones 9
Shared experiences are more properly put in IMHO. Moved.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
Well, I’m not so sure I would have put it there, because I do think this entire topic is based more on asking about and sharing information rather than experiences, but okay…
Actually, they (the doctors involved, I mean) think they know where all of this likely came from. Topamax (which I started taking last September) is known for causing kidney stones. However, I am NOT stopping it, because it’s been a miracle for me-- I’ve never found anything else like it. There’s nothing else that really works for my epilepsy besides Topamax and it doesn’t have any other side effects. I did some research on Pubmed, and several studies have found good results with preventing kidney stones from (I love this name!)
Lemonade Therapy. 
A A A A A R R R R R G G G G G H H H H H !!!
If I remember correctly, I think I’ve had kidney stones. 
If I were to succumb to terminal amnesia, I’m sure the last thing to be forgotten would be kidney stones.
Anyway, my first attack was in 1979 and as everyone else has said, it is difficult to figure out just what the Hell is happening to you. I thought my kidney was hemmorrhaging, rupturng, corroding, etc. My brother drove me to a hospital emrgency room where I learned the bad news.
Since this was back in the day when they had to do kidney stone surgery (lithotrypsy), the doctors wanted to leave it alone for a while to see if it passed. (Yeah, but did they have to wait 10 @#^%^%#@# months ?!?!? :mad:) In those 10 months, did I have any repeat attacks? Too many to count :mad: and after all that, they still had to cut it out of me.
Well, no sense in adding anything to all the stories that have already been told.
Ever hear some people say what a wonderful miracle the human body is? I bet those people never had a kidney stone.
Of all the replies so far, I thought I might have had the roughest time with kidney stones, but Napier makes me feel like a renal calculus amateur.
I’ve had two. The first one started off like this: It was a few days before semester break when I was in college and I woke up and went to the bathroom. I was alarmed because my urine came out looking like Coca-Cola. I immediately called my parents back home and told them about it. They said to wait it out until I got home a couple of days later and I would go see the doctor. Okay, the next day, I woke up with a dull pain in my lower back on the left. It went away over the course of the day. The next day, I woke up with the same dull pain, but then it increased until I could not stand it. I called the University Police and they brought me to the city emergency room. The triage nurse tried to take my blood pressure, but I was squirming so much from the pain that she couldn’t get the cuff on. She said “This looks like classic kidney stone pain.” She put me in a room and told me to put on a gown, I ripped off my clothes without a care to who was in the room and just wanted to get any kind of pain reliever. The finally hooked me up to an IV and gave me some medication. It helped with the pain, but as soon as I could feel it wearing off, I was like “Doc, you gotta give me some more soon!” Eventually, I went home with my parents (they drove in and met me in the emergency room) and the kidney stone had traveled to my bladder where it stayed for a few weeks until it passed. I didn’t even feel it come out, but I caught it in my sieve that the doctor gave me. It was a jagged little pebble.
The second one happened about 10 years later. I was at work in the middle of the afternoon in a city councilmember’s office. I felt a dull pain in my lower back. I immediately called my wife and said, “I am about to go check myself into the emergency room because I want to get there before I cannot move any more.” I left work immediately and right after I got to the hospital, I was in full pain where I could not do anything to get comfortable or alleviate the pain. And that’s just it. The pain does NOT go away. It just stays there. You can’t get rid of it by changing position or anything. And yes, it is the most painful thing I have felt. However, I have only had 2 kidney stones. Now, I have gout and I get that about 2 times a year. And THAT is almost the same as a kidney stone. It’s a very close second in pain.
Holy cow, 10 months.:eek: I waited 2 weeks and when the doctor asked me if I wanted them removed I scheduled it the same day.
Dude, change doctors.
On the subject of pain, I did a poll somewhere - I think here - asking for people who had both had children and had kidney stones to say which was worse. Of the 17 people who said they had had both, all 17 called the stones worse.
I’ve also had a slipped disk, and it was overall a nastier experience than any of the stones were, but nastier because it lasted longer and interfered with my life more. They did a stearoid injection and bumped the nerve root in the process, and for half a second that hurt worse than anything else I’ve had. So, that’s my worse half second. When I had my lithotomy, I woke up in the OR when they were finished with me and preparing to move me back onto a gurney, and somebody said “Hey, he’s waking up! Hey, you, go back to sleep, you don’t want to be awake!” That would have to be my worse several seconds. But on a time scale of minutes or hours, the stones have been the worse.
Also, there is a big variety in the feeling, depending on where the stone is and how big (and who knows what else). If you really want to know what a stone feels like, you have ask somebody that has only had one or two. I am no longer sure what they can’t feel like.
Fair enough. I was pregnant when I slipped mine, so not only did I not know for sure what was wrong (no x-rays, MRIs or CAT scans allowed) but the pain continued unabated for eight months. The only treatment was extreme pain meds, which I did my best not to take because of worry for my baby. Let’s not forget that during 6 of those eight months I was getting continually heavier, and my center of balance was shifting in an extremely inconvenient direction.
But enough about pain; back to kidney stones! This was on totallylookslike.com this morning.
Just ewwwwwwww!
Thanks for sharing, but, um… I don’t think I’ll look at it, whatever it is. Anyway… Would anybody be interested in seeing some links to info about kidney stone prevention? I’m an MSW, thinking about going on to a PhD at some point, and I do a lot of research through the University of Tennessee. So while I’m at home resting after the Kidney Stone Ordeal of Doom ™ (okay, it wasn’t THAT bad!), I’m going to put together a research project on best evidence-based methods of kidney stone prevention. A lot of info out there is extremely outdated, even on sites that should be trustworthy (Mayo Clinic, etc.) Some are still recommending things like avoiding sodium! (Not a good idea at all.)
So, because we’re on this thread because we’ve all had KS’s, and because having one means we’re likely to have more, how about it? Who’d be interested?
I think if the devil had struck Job with kidney stones he would have been quick to curse god and die!
I had one a few years ago. The pain started while driving to a meeting - I thought it was some kind of intestinal problem because I had wolfed down a bagel way too fast. About halfway there I had to pull over and let the other guy in the car drive because it got worse and worse. When I got to the meeting, a doctor who was there took one look at me, heard the symptoms, and said “Get to the ER, now.”
They did a urine test and a scan to confirm the stone, and finally gave me some morphine. Holy crap, that was the best feeling of all time - the pain just washed away. Amazing. They sent me home with a prescription for Endocet (a generic Percoset), and at that point I was feeling fine.
Then the pain came back a few hours later and I took the Endocet. Within a few minutes I was projectile vomiting all over the place. It was brutal. Back to a different ER (closer to home), where they again gave me morphine (sweet, sweet morphine) and kept me under observation for a few hours.
Then home again with Vicodin to wait for it to pass, which it did a couple days later, and was not that bad. My stone was VERY small. I could not believe the pain it caused. I drink a shit-ton of water now and haven’t had another one.
I had one last year, and at no time was it anything more than uncomfortable. My brother and sister have both had them, and been hospitalized for the pain, but I had none to speak of. The doc gave me Flomax, and it passed early Christmas morning - the nicest present I got all day.