Well, when I was in the hospital about a week ago, they did an ultrasound for something else entirely and discovered that there’s a nice, 8mm stone in one of my kidneys. No idea how long it’s been there and it seems to be just sitting there, not being obstructive or anything. This was about ten days ago.
Ever since then, I just feel like I have a ticking time bomb inside of me, just waiting to go off. I’ve never had a kidney stone before, and–from what I’ve read of them (one of the most horrible, huge, intense, painful things a person can have…to the point where they feel like they’re dying)–I really hope I don’t have my first kidney stone. I’ve also read that 8mm is on the large end of them and stones that size are not easily passed, usually needing help from medical procedures to break it up. Ugh.
The doctor said it could just stay up there and never start its journey down, however…and there’s really no telling how long it’s already been there, so for all I know it’s been there for years already.
Anyway, I feel like I’m playing the waiting game. I figured I’d make this topic so that if it ever does start to give me trouble, I can just link back to this topic and then update everyone.
Uh, knock on wood that doesn’t happen.
Making this in IMHO, just because I’m kinda looking for others who have had kidney stones, either in their kidneys like me or that HAVE wound up causing huge pain…
Unfortunately, I know exactly how bad kidney stones hurt. I’ve passed over a dozen in the last ten years. One was so big(25mm), it could only be removed surgically. I believe it was called Percutaneous Nephrolithotripsy. More to come. My computer is messing up.
What is your doctor suggesting that you do at this point?
My advice is drink a lot of water.
Second, Given the type of stones that run in my family (well, the stones don’t run in our family, but we have a predisposition to getting a certain kind), our collected experience suggests that upping citrus content helps dissolve or prevent stones. So we drink a lot of lemon water, eat citrus, etc. You need to make sure there are no medical interactions between any medications you are taking and citrus. This may or may not help with your stone. Until it’s out, you can’t have it tested to know what kind it is.
It usually starts as a bad backache, so watch for that. Also any UTI symptoms. Don’t wait for it to get bad. Head for urgent care or the ER as soon as you suspect it’s moving. 1) it will get painful and 2) you need to be mindful of blockages.
You might speak to your dr. about having a small amount of heavy duty painkiller on hand for when it starts to move. It’s much easier to stop the pain early then it is to try and get it later.
Me too. I’ve passed two and been diagnosed with Renal Stone Disease. I have a number of stones in various stages of readiness to cause mayhem.
I’m on a low-oxalate diet to try to prevent the formation of additional ones. A low-oxalate diet remarkably rules out a lot of my favourite foods: spinach, rhubarb, bran, squash and much more. Tea is out too. There are mixed thoughts on whether coffee is an issue, so I’ve reduced my intake without cutting it out all together. I’ve upped my water intake and I have my fingers crossed.
It is incredibly painful and of the two I’ve passed, they presented differently in terms of where I thought the pain was coming from. The first felt like a heart attack and the second like appendicitis. It helped considerably that once I arrived at the ER they administered a Morphine drip. The instant the stone passes the pain stops. It’s just brutal in the passing.
I’ve passed 3 over the years, two hurt like hell, no worse than hell. 1 was only hurting like hell and it helped that I knew what the pain was to manage it a bit.
The first stone scared the shit out of me, I was only 26 and it hit in the middle of the night when I got up for some reason. The pain was so severe and sharp it dropped me to the ground. I started panicking it was a heart attack and I recall accessing something along this line, no wait, the pain is lower and towards the back, like my kidney or something, oh shit my kidney collapsed, no wait that does even make sense, what the hell is this, then I started screaming for help and my wife call 911. I spent a long agonizing time in the ER and was pounding the wall at one point the pain was so severe.
Second stone was also bad and also sent me to the ER, but this time I knew what it was, what probably caused it and it thankfully passed in under 10 hours. This one happened the day after I moved into my house. I was working really hard all day and for the first time in about a decade let myself become dehydrated.
As per my urologist, keep hydrated, it really helps.
There are several kind of stones, with different chemical compositions. If you know which kind you usually have, you can change your diet to avoid their formation or dissolve them. For instance, my mother had a huge one and the alternatives were removing the kidney or drinking a lot of a specific kind of mineral water. I was amazed that the options were so extreme. In fact, the mineral water did dissolve most of the stone (the first doctor she saw just told her she needed the surgery. It’s another who mentioned the water and told her to try this first. Another example of why it could be a good idea to ask for a second medical advice.
But since you don’t what is the likely composition of your stone, you can’t really drink/eat specific things to help dissolve it or hinder its formation (IIRC, there’s even one item which is useful for one kind of stone and detrimental for another).
And yes, it’s super painful. And it can take a while to evacuate one. As for it being large enough to require an intervention, it might be a blessing if they use ultrasounds to break it up (rather than having you endure the pain for a couple weeks because it’s rather small and should easily pass according to them :mad: )
Mine are Uric acid based and the only change to my diet was dropping the cabbage family which as I don’t like broccoli or cauliflower wasn’t too bad. I understand that high red meat and alcohol intake can also be bad if prone to uric acid stones.
Most stones are calcium based though. I don’t know what the diet change is for them, but in all cases I have been told that keeping hydrated is very important.
Oh, yes, the morphine. What a blessing. But later on, when I asked the emergency ward doctor about how to treat the pain before my release, he visibly and immediately switched to suspicious mode. And I never got adequate pain medecine for the two next weeks :mad:
However, it doesn’t hurt all the time in my experience. The pain comes and go.
Finally, that’s because I had read kidney stones being mentioned quite a lot in the “what was your most painful experience” threads on this board that I guessed what it was when I passed one. Basically, I couldn’t think of anything else than the pain while it lasted (contarily to my second worst : dental abcesses, of which I had several. It hurts a lot, you sometimes can’t sleep, but you still can operate, do what you have to do, think of stuff. With the kidney stone, “it hurts” was about my only thought).
I discovered when I got mine that the standard medical advice when you’re passing a stone is completely opposite in France and the USA : they tell you to drink a lot in the USA (apparently to help “flush out” the stone quicker) while the tell you to limit water intake in France (apparently to avoid kidney damages potentially caused by a difficulty in evacuating urine properly).
Note that drinking less does reduce the pain (but I assume it can make it lasts longer, so from this point of view, it’s a toss).
Interesting, I found a few beers helped move the stone out, but that was my own experience and absolutely not Doctor recommended. The drinking 8 cups of water a day though was just something the Doctor recommended in general to prevent new stones, not for once a stone started its painful passage out of my body.
I first started to feel the stone while at work, it wasn’t bad at first, just a slight cramping pain. But after a while the pain was so bad I could barely walk, so I had to go home. On that day, there was a blizzard and traffic was moving around 25mph so it took a lot longer than usual. I was just going to go home and wait out the pain like I had done with all the other stones. But about halfway home the pain got so bad that my body started convulsing and I vomited every time the pain spiked. It was the worst pain I had every experienced, until I got home from surgery anyway.
After the surgery, I was very nauseous and only had slight pain, the pain killers helped. Since I had a catheter, I didn’t have to go to the bathroom to urinate. I went home the day after the surgery, feeling just a little sore. About six hours after I got home, I had to urinate for the first time without the catheter, but what I didn’t know is that they forgot to remove the stent. Also, the pain killers had worn off by then.
As soon as I started to urinate, the cramping started. It felt like my kidney was in a slowing tightening bench vise, and the more urine that came out the tighter it got. By the time I was done, my kidney felt like it was going to explode and I was on the floor in the fetal position. I had to crawl back to my bedroom to lie down, I could only get really short shallow breaths and my heart was racing. When I finally got back to my bed, I was having such a hard time breathing that I thought I was going to pass out.
Just when I thought the pain couldn’t possible get any worse, I received an intense stabbing pain in my left arm and chest area. It felt like someone was plunging a knife above my heart. At that point, I’m just lying on my bed in unimaginable pain rubbing the area above my chest and trying very desperately to breathe and not pass out. I don’t know if I had passed out or fell asleep, but when I woke up, my lungs and stomach were very sore from trying to breathe, but the kidney and chest pain had subsided.
The next day, I went to the doctor and had the stent removed. Which they sort of bungled that as well. It was pretty awkward and unpleasant. If you want to hear about it, I’ll post it.
Go to a urologist. They can laser it out. It’s an outpatient procedure with general anesthesia. You’ll go home with a stint in your urethra. In a few days, you go back to the urologist office and they take the stint out in the office. You go home.
I had this done this past year and snow-skied for 5 days after the outpatient procedure. The stint was more irritating than the skiing. In fact the skiing distracted me from the stint.
I just had my first kidney stone. An absolutely horrible experience. It began by me feeling pain in my mid-right abdominal area. After a couple hours of increasing pain, I began urinating blood, a deep burgundy color.
Now, a kidney stone didn’t even enter into my mind, since I had thought a kidney stone would cause pain in my kidneys. And my pain was in the area of where my liver is, that’s what I thought was the source of the problem. And it freaked me the fuck out.
By the time I got to the ER, I was in such pain, I couldn’t sit up, talk, or do anything but moan in agony. Long story short, it turned out to be a stone in my ureter, which is in front in the area that was hurting. It was quite a relief to find out it wasn’t something more serious, even tho it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to endure.
I’ve passed at least six of the diabolical things.
Seconded that 8mm is probably too large to pass on its own; even if it can it would take forever and the pain would be mind-altering. I had one about that size, and having it shattered was the only option I was given. The procedure was fairly unpleasant, and the amount of blood one pees out afterward is a bit shocking, if not all that dangerous. Also, sorry to say, but if there’s one that large, there may be a few smaller ones hanging around as well. Three days after the procedure for the big one, I happened to pass a smaller (about 2mm) one as well; since my insides were still a bit ripped up from the earlier procedure, the pain was even more hideous than usual.
Mine were all calcium oxalate (I believe about 80% of all stones are this composition) and I was never advised that any particular fluid intake could dissolve them; once they’ve formed, they’re formed.
Get some solid advice on diet changes; of the stones are oxalate, some fairly simple steps (as mentioned, increasing fluid intake and cutting down on dark-colored vegetables and tea) will help prevent a re-occurrence.
Yeah, 8 mm is pretty big. I’ve passed 5 mm stones but nothing bigger.
I’ve had more than 40, starting when I was about 20, all calcium oxalate. I am pretty sure I have one in my right ureter right this minute, and had a CAT scan this morning for it (no result yet tho).
I’ve had enough lithotripsies and cystoscopies that I have lost count, and one good old fashioned lithotomy with a 6" scar. I’ve been taking a dietary supplement called “Theralith” to prevent them, and it seemed to do so pretty thoroughly for a few years, but I passed a pretty small stone last spring and now think I have this one, so I guess something’s wrong with that.
You could also take Polycitra to reduce calcium oxalate stones. It has the weird side benefit that mosquitos stop being interested. A friend noticed that mosquitos had left me alone and asked me if I was taking Citronella, and I had to wonder…
No personal experience but my husband’s had a few of them. The last couple they used a type of ultrasound - Shock Wave Lithotripsy - to break up the big stone(s) into pieces small enough to pass.