Wow, after almost three months I finally passed one of my two stones. Damn thing was almost 1/4 inch long.
Last night I was in extreme pain. My penis was throbbing in pain about every 15 seconds. I took some of the pain medication that the urologist gave me for flare-ups and the pain continued for about 45 minutes and then after one particularly excruciating episode, the pain went away. I fell back asleep and when I urinated this morning, the stone just flowed out with the urine. When it actually passed, there was no pain.
I have been dealing with these stones since Labor Day. There has been blood in my urine and one night in the emergency room. (First time I had been in the hospital in 34 years.) I have had a Ultra-Sound, a CAT-Scan, and a cystoscopy ( all procedures in October). Follow-up visist to the urologist (after the cysto) says that was nothing life threatening in my plumbing and I will pass the stones (6 mm and 4 mm) eventually. I told that I thought 6 mm was kind of large (especially considering the size of my tunnel) but he assured me it could pass.
I had been relatively pain free since my last Dr’s visit until last night. The stone I passed must have the 6 mm size so the other one will be a piece of cake. :eek:
Hope for it, but don’t bet on it. Size doesn’t always correlate with degree of pain. But hey, maybe you’ll get lucky.
Have you had your stone analyzed? Once you find out what it’s made of, your doc can guide you on how to alter your diet (generally via certain vitamin or mineral supplements) to help reduce the risk of future stone formation.
My husband has gout and occasionally kidney/bladder stones. He was put on Allopurinol for the gout and the stones pretty much cleared up. His dose was cut in half by a stupic doctor who made a mistake and would not own up to it and the stones came back within a month. Back to normal dose and stones go away. I had not heard of this a treatment for stones, but it seems to work that way for him.
He is lucky that he passes the stones when they are small, less than 5mm x 2mm x 2mm usually. We guess that they are uric acid stones based on the Allopurinol response. He also is on a diet avoiding beets, dark green leafy vegetables, beans, etc. that exacerbate gout.
Good job passing that stone… been there and it is NOT pretty. I’m a girl, so it didn’t have as far to go, but the pain was enough to make me faint. I don’t want to imagine how much worse it must be to have it go that extra mile.
Now find out what the cause is and try really really hard to avoid getting any more!!
As I’ve mentioned before I’ve fought a war with kidney stones, and in January the stones declared victory, when my right kidney became non-functional. I had to have my right kidney removed. and so far they have not been back on the left side.
Being the self centered creature that I am I thought nobody could top the pain I’d felt, until, in another thread, a fellow Doper told us about her sister who passed a stone while she was in labor!!! That’s got to be a topper. My urologist told me that he’d had mothers who said kidney stones felt worse than labor.
My ex had a few bouts with kidney stones. One time, he had to leave school and go to the ER due to an attack - his prinicipal was driving him to the hospital, and ex was hanging out the window puking. “Cool, this is just like college!” was all that the principal could muster.
I understand that it is one of the most excrutiating experiences. I hope your other stone just floats on through without any fanfare. Of course, you’ve been told to stay super-hydrated, but I’ll just remind you that water is always best.
I’ve been there, notfrommensa, and it’s no fun at all. I am glad for you that you got rid of the thing and that you are chipper enough to post about it. It is stuff like this that convinces a guy that morphine, not dogs, are a man’s best friend. Three cheers for all those poppy growers in Afghanistan.
Incidently, my doctors, including the emergency room guy at Mayo Clinic, tell me that it is critical to avoiding repeat performances that you drink LOTS of water, and back off coffee – not eliminate it but back off – this from a guy who was going through eight or ten cups of strong and black every day.
Some have said that a good kidney stone attack is right up there with child birth when it comes to what the medical profession calls discomfort. I have no trouble believing that but I’m not about to suggest an equivalency to my wife.
Thankfully, I’ve never had a problem with stones. But, I did suffer and extremely bad kidney, bladder, UT - infection combo. The doctor told me that my urine didn’t actually contain any urine. It was all blood. They were certain I had at least one kidney stone. After the CT scan, they decided it was just an infection. I was out of work for two weeks and now, 3 years later, I still get stabbing pains in my right kidney.
All I can say is, I can’t even begin to imagine what an actual stone feels like. The infection alternated between feeling like:
1 - someone was digging around in my bladder with a jagged Klingon weapon.
2 - someone was pulling my kidney out through my navel.
3 - someone was pushing my kidney back up through my urethra.
The fact that you guys can stand the pain long enough to pass the stones amazes me more than you can imagine. It’s hard to believe anything could be worse than my infection but I know that’s not true.
My sympathy goes out to all of you.
Oh, and - the few women I know who have all had stones and childbirth, agree that stones are much worse.
Do urologists not treat kidney stones with lithotripsy anymore? (however you spell it. that procedure where they attack the stone with sound waves, or something, that breaks the stone) Why do folks have to go through all this pain to pass a stone if there’s a treatment for it?
I had four lithotripsies before my kidney gave up the fight. The stones kept coming back on my right side, and I kept getting the infections. Even though a lithotripsy is non-invasive, it does pound on the kidney some. Between those, the stones, the infections, the kidney lost function. If I’d one had to have one or two lithotripsies, things would have been different.
I had lithotripsy for my stone. It’s like having someone rub their socks on the carpet and touch your belly to give you a zap. About a** million ** times.
And they managed to miss the stone completely, leaving me to squeeze it out on my own, tearing my ureters to little bits in the process. Well, ok, I didn’t tear them up, but it really did feel like that. Thank God for the painkillers they gave me. I was stoned for a month but at least I didn’t lose my whole semester.
You bet your bippy I’m drinking much more water these days!
I heard this too, and believe it. I salute all of you stone sufferers.
My husband is a very healthy guy but a couple years ago he had a stone. We had no idea what was happening until I took him to the emergency room. We both have pretty high pain thresholds; he is especially stoic, but he was hurting so much he was literally green with pain and dry heaves.
They told us what was going on and my husband remembered that his aunt used to get stones. She too said that she’d rather be in labor.
Days later he drank a few beers on the 4th of July and passed the stone.
I can understand the jubilation accompanying the passing of those little demons.
When I got my first kidney stone, I was told by my doctor that no, that horrible agonizing pain wasn’t my kidneys at all. It was muscle pain, because I was overweight. I tried to tell him I’d been in track and cross-country in high school and knew muscle pain, and this wasn’t it. “No no,” he said. “Muscle pain feels like what you’re describing.” “No no,” I said. “I know my own body. This isn’t muscle pain.”
Two weeks later, kidney stone. There is nothing quite like it. You can’t get comfortable. You can’t make the pain stop. It is constant and throbbing and absolutely overwhelming. I was writhing around crying on a hospital bed, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I was drinking as much water as I could, and I remember vividly staggering into the bathroom and evacuating my stomach. I was in so much pain, I threw up, and it Just. Wouldn’t. Stop. One of the toilets had overflowed and I was kneeling in dirty water filling a toilet from my stomach in more pain than I’d ever experienced in my life. It was like something out of a really bad nightmare.
Nothing in the world feels so GOOD as when the pain stops.
I had a kidney stone a few years ago. Yep, thank God for morphine and its derivatives. When I saw the urologist for a follow-up, he said the pain is caused by the kidney backing up (the stone is clogging the “drain” so to speak). The pain is not from the stone itself. I’ve never been able to prove or disprove this though. Anyone know the SD?
There’s more than one sensation involved in passing kidney stones. In my experience, along with the excruciating lower back pain, there’s a less severe but still aggravating sensation that one has to pee and can’t. This sensation is probably what peedin’s urologist is describing.
The sensation of actually passing the stone from the bladder through the penis isn’t really painful at all, at least not compared to that of its journey from the kidney to the bladder. I just got the biggest piss shiver of my life and out it came.
My husband has learned a trick to help make the passing of the stone a bit easier. As it gets to the point it is entering the urethra, I remind him to masturbate. The viscous fluid seems to ease the passage of the stones in that it buffers the sensitive tissue. Sometimes it furthers a stone already in the urethra.
On my kidney stones the peeing presure sensation, and the ripping through things sensation wern’t the main pain. The main pain was my left nut feeling like it was getting kicked hard every 5 minutes or so, with constaint lesser thwaps every 20 seconds.
