Feh. You don’t know what fun you were missing out on.
There’s a nice staghorn calculus on display at the Mayo Clinic’s medical museum in Rochester, Minnesota - or at least there was 25 years ago when I visited.
I had a kidney stone about 5 years ago. It was thiiiiiiiiiiis biiiiiiiig <stretches arms out>.
At least it felt that way.
Lucky me, I got to spend Memorial Day weekend in the hospital, absolutely wasted on morphine, with IV fluids dripping through me while they tried to get the stone to pass.
It never did. They had to go get it.
Tra la! I wake up in the recovery room and the pain is gone. Completely. Oh, frabjous day, calloo callay!
They wheel me back up to my room, and then I ask them how much longer I’d have to say. They tell me that all I have to do is urinate. Well, hell, that’s one of my best things, so I go to the can.
Uh huh. I bet those sadistic bastards park a portable decibel meter outside the room and guess if the patient can hit E above high C at or above 90 dB.
You think they’d tell you to adopt a low flow approach at first. White hot razor blade shards.
But that got better over the next few days. 'Course, then the stent has to come out. Lemme tell ya, that lidocaine jelly that they inject doesn’t do much, if anything, to lessen the “discomfort.” She retrieves her Torquemada Tools and goes to work. Then she says, “OK, I’m going to pass through your prostate now. You might feel some pressure.”
“Might” “Some,” and “Pressure” – can be very misleading words.
Anyway, the stent comes out, and it’s back to another few days of operating on minimum hydraulic pressure.
I get the uric acid kind of stones–invisible to x-ray. Same stuff that gives me gout.
Ureter gout. Oh, God.
I’ve only had the one stone, but I’ll know what it is if it ever happens again. The first time I thought I was dying. The next time there will be no three day waiting period. GET IT OUT NOW!
Probably at least two dozen kidney stones by now. The first few I didn’t even realize that is what they were. I assumed the terrible pain was gas, or a pulled muscle. It wasn’t until years later when I was actually diagnosed with kidney stones did I have a “Hey, wait a minute…” realization of what they were.
I was told to lay off beer, peanuts and iced tea. That is about half my diet.
These days I will feel the urge to pee more and my urine will get dark and I’ll say “I think I’ve got a stone coming.” Sure enough I’ll shoot one out within the week. Probably averaging 4 times a year now.
For the record the first few times were as painful as anything I’ve ever experienced - and I’ve shattered my left leg twice, shingles, divorce - you name it.
Kidney stones hurt.
Opiates are useful.
What part of Wisconsin do you live in?
A friend of mine has related to me several kidney-stone stories that his brother has told him.
Once, the stone hit just as the brother was stepping off a bus in Switzerland. He crumpled to the ground, vomited, peed himself, and lost bowel control, all in one smooth motion. The Swiss bystanders called for medical help but seemed quite upset over the mess he had made in the otherwise spotless street.
Another time, the brother was in the men’s room at work when it hit. His workplace is some sort of laboratory / foundry, and it was too noisy for anyone outside to hear him screaming. He crumpled into a ball on the floor, and the pain was so paralyzing that after a while the lights, which were on a motion sensor, went out. He had seen Trainspotting recently, and lying there alone and wracked in the dark on the men’s room floor, he said he felt like a heroin addict.
From what I was told by my doc, a stone can sit in the area of your kidney for months, years, even decades before it get’s the Price is Right call (“COME ON DOWN!!!”). So when it does can be subtle by days, hours (as in my case), minutes, or even seconds. I know someone who has been shot that told me the immediate onset of a kidney stone felt exactly like when he was shot in the lower pelvis. It really, REALLY, **REALLY **sucks! Big Time!!!
I joined the Extreme Pain Club when I was 18. Spent 3 days in the hospital, because they wouldn’t discharge me until the stone passed. The stupid thing was only 4mm, but extremely sharp and jagged. Amazing how something so small could cause such excruciating pain.
Jump ahead 30 years …
I have since gathered a collection of about 20 damn stones, that I keep in a film canister, and that doesn’t include all those that were sent off to labs for analysis (the result always being calcium oxalate). About 15 years ago I had Lithotripsy done on a 7mm stone, but the xray a week later showed that the stone was still there. All I got was a huge purple bruise on my side. Six months later, another xray showed no stone - it had indeed disintegrated. I never felt a thing.
As to the topic of child birth vs. kidney stone pain, I was one of the unlucky ones who had a renal colic DURING the birth of my son. HOLY HELL.
I have learned that I have about a 15 minute window, beginning with that first stab of pain, in which to either get to the ER or begin the ingestion of Demerol/Vicodin/Lortabs NOW, before all rules no longer apply, and I become a screaming, writhing, sometimes vomiting, vegetable.
Last year was one of those ER episodes, but the Dilaudid they eventually shot me up with, was ever so very nice. The CT scan revealed a 9mm stone, that I was told would not be passing on its own. WELL, when you don’t have health insurance, I believe your threshold of pain automatically increases. I did pass that stone, about 6 months later. It took 10 days to pass (but it was only a dull ache, so I think it was already in the bladder). **The thing was 12mm.
** I kid you not. When I saw it, I nearly went over the edge.:rolleyes:
Back in 2000, only a few months after my sister had her appendix removed, I woke up in the middle of the night with a bit of pain in my side. Seemed similar to the pain she had described, thought it was the same thing. Within minutes of waking up I was curled up in the hallway trying to wake my parents up so we could go to the hospital.
Folks in the ER seemed to think it was funny to demand a urine sample from me before providing me any drugs. Needed to eliminate some things before giving me the Demerol. Another 20 or so minutes writhing in pain, puking up everything I ate that night, and a “pep” talk from my dad explaining to me that I would go into the bathroom and produce a sample at that very moment, the Demerol was flowing straight into my IV.
Now, for those that don’t know me, and that’s probably 100% of you, I’ve never done any drugs or consumed enough alcohol to be anywhere near tipsy, let alone drunk. Aside from an adrenaline high from skydiving, I’ve never really experienced any high or otherwise altered state. Let me tell you, I could tell the instant the Demerol entered my blood stream and it was wonderful! Nurse commented to my dad that, “You can always tell the ones that don’t do drugs.”
Of course at this point I’m no longer in any pain whatsoever so they decide it’d be a good time to fill out the patient history and wheel me down for a CAT scan to see just how big the sucker was. I had to have several questions on the patient history repeated to me and nearly passed out during the CAT scan. I still don’t really remember the entire scan, or returning to my room.
Long story short the pain was gone by the morning. I guess the pain was mostly the stone traveling from kidney through the ureter to the bladder. I stayed for a night before they gave up and said I would probably not be passing it their. Aside from one day of a little discomfort, the next 4 months of not passing a stone were pain free. The final passing was a little uncomfortable but nothing horrible.
Good luck with yours!
I’ve had 4 kidney stones during a 2 year span.
The first hit me in Dec of 2005. I was Christmas shopping and on my way home when it hit. The pain lasted for about 30 min, then stopped completely. I chalked it up to a bad case of intestinal distress. Fast forward to April, 2006. I was at a 2 day magic convention. The 2nd day of the convention I wake up to an excruciating pain in my right lower back. The organizer of the convention (who happened to be a practicing doctor, advised me to take 4 Ibuprofin and go to the emergency room if the pain didn’t subside. By that afternoon, the pain was gone, but the next day when I was to leave for home (4.5 hr trip) the pain was back and was getting worse. I drove the entire 4.5 hr trip home WHILE AT THE SAME TIME passing the kidney stone. I know… not one of my brighter moments. All I wanted was to get home and get there as quickly as possible. When I got home, my wife took me to the ER where the pain immediately stopped when I walked through the door. The ER staff was looking at me like I was nuts. CT scan and urine samples showed no evidence of kidney stones.
After 3 more stones, I finally went to a Kidney specialist. From the sample I was able to give him, he found it was a calcium oxalate stone. He started me on 200mg of Vitamin B-6 every day as well as a drug called Urocit. Since I’ve been on those, I haven’t had any more stones and life has been good.
For me each stone presented the same symptoms: The urge to urinate all the time, excruciating pain in my lower back on one side, pain and discomfort just above my genital area. Every stone I passed was not very big… about 2-3 mm.
The last thing I will say about the experience is that the paper filter they gave me to try and catch the stone works like crap. I ended up borrowing the plastic one my dad was given when he passed his stones.
I do have a question for those who’ve had kidney stones… I passed one, they said there were two in my kidney but God only knows when or if they’d do anything, my doctor ordered an X-ray for Friday, and I want to sign up for a 5 week training class, but I really need to sign up before Friday. (The class would start Monday the 20th of July.) Based on everyone’s experiences with what happened once you’d had a KS and you knew there were others but nobody knew if or when they would ever do anything, what do y’all think? I really do NOT!! want to miss this class.
All opinions appreciated.
Anise - I am not a doctor but I don’t recall mine putting any restrictions on what could or could not be done whilst waiting to pass my stone. There was a good 4 months or so where the damn thing didn’t come out. Only one day did it bother me to the point where I didn’t want to go work my retail job because walking around was uncomfortable. Hell, that pain could have been totally unrelated to the KS, I don’t really know 100%.
Dragwyr - Yeah, those paper filters were useless. The doctors and nurses were so confident I was going to pass that thing in the hospital. When that didn’t happen they sent me home and figured the 2-3 filters would be enough. I ended up purchasing a cheap mesh kitchen strainer. I kept it as far away from the kitchen as possible for the 4 months I waited.
Like I said in a previous post, they can sit inside of you indefinitely. Days, weeks, months, years.
And the only medical advice doctors give is “drink a lot of water”.:rolleyes: In the 21st century that’s all they got!