I’m not looking for medical advice; I’ve been to the Emergency Room (hence the diagnosis) and I’ll be following up with my primary care physician on Monday or ASAP. I expect he will refer me to a urologist.
My request is, what should I expect from this experience? So far, it hasn’t been fun. Initially, I woke up with severe, sudden, unexplained pain in my lower left back (kidney area). That’s what motivated me to go to the ER. Now, the pain is managed with meds, but I understand that I am in for quite a ride as this problem progresses. What am I in for? Any anecdotes you’re willing to share.
The ER doc said he had a patient who had delivered twins vaginally with no anesthesia. She said that the kidney stone was worse than that. This was not helpful…
I am a 56 (57 next week) year old male in Texas, if that matters.
I’ve lost track of how many kidney stones I’ve had. Roughly a dozen or so. Unmedicated, they are horribly painful. But with the right pain meds, generally they aren’t too bad. It sounds like you have the pain under control, which is the important thing. All of my stones have passed in 1-7 days. Once it reaches the bladder it’s all over as far as the pain goes. Passing from the bladder out the urethra is completely painless in my experience; the painful part is the spasms while it’s moving from the kidney to the bladder.
On the other hand, a friend of mine had one that didn’t pass on its own and required surgery. So the experience can be quite variable. The only thing you can really do is drink plenty of water and hope that it passes quickly.
If this is your first stone the doctor may have asked you to pee through a special strainer to catch the stone so they can analyze it later. Mine have been calcium oxalate (the most common type). Knowing the stone type helps the doctor determine the cause and the best way to prevent recurrences.
You have probably experienced the worst pain that you will. Your ureter is much more narrow than the urethra.
It’ll hurt off and on for awhile, and will occasionally get as bad as it did before. When the stone gets into your bladder, for awhile you’ll always feel as if you have to pee. That isn’t fun.
Passing them out of the bladder and through the urethra didn’t hurt me much. Nowhere near like the pain I experienced when it was in the ureter.
Once it’s out you’ll be 100 percent fine.
Drink cranberry juice and lots of water. I find standing up more comfortable than lying down. Hot baths help when the pain is very bad.
Yes, in my experience the stone being stuck in the ureter is the worst part. Here’s my experience, around 8 or so passed stones, 4 with surgery. Good pain control is important. If the smooth muscle spasm of the ureter is controlled, it makes it a lot easier for the stone to pass on its own.
If it doesn’t pass, then there’s the not so fun part. For me, the urologist performed a ureteroscopy (thankfully under anesthesia) to remove the stone. This is basically using a scope to go in and remove it. The problem is that they will then place a double J stent to keep the ureter from clamping down and to help any further stones pass. That thing causes intermittent cramping, and is usually left in place for about 2 weeks. Then there’s the removal, which is done in the office with no anesthesia. They don’t have to go all the way in to the ureter, but they do use a scope to grab the end in the bladder and then pull it out. Not any fun. I recommend passing it without having to mess with any of that.
After ER and later visit to the doctor I was scheduled for a test if it didn’t come out. To prepare I had to drink a lot of liquids and had to go to the bathroom a lot. I was reading the next step in the preparation and it would not be pleasant. I had to go to the bathroom again and I said to the kidney stone “you come out now”. Then I went to the bathroom and it came out. I didn’t have to do the unpleasant stuff. I tell people that it was my command that made it come out. It wouldn’t hurt to try. (yes, I know it’ was a coincidence).
I’ll give you an anecdote you’ll probably be glad to hear.
I had a kidney stone. And I passed it so easily I wasn’t even sure I had passed it. I saw it in the filter cup I was supposed to urinate through and I thought “That can’t have been it. I’ve always heard they’re incredibly painful and I felt nothing.”
But I brought it to the lab and they verified that it was the kidney stone. So apparently it is possible to pass a kidney stone painlessly.
The most common type of stone is calcium oxalate, which is the type I’ve had, so I only know what the doctors have told me about that type. Always staying hydrated is the most important thing you can do. I try to drink at least a liter, preferably 2 liters of water each day. They will also tell you to minimize salt, green leafy vegetables and meat, but that’s a diet that’s hard to maintain and it only reduces, not eliminates, the chance of stones. I focus primarily on hydration, and try to reduce salt to some extent.
It’s surprising how such a small thing can cause such incredible pain. This is my first stone. It’s about the size of a grain of sand and caused the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced in my life.
I thank what gods there may be that I’ve never had a kidney stone and hope I never will.
The risk factors for kidney stones appear to be “just about everything”, but two factors that stand out for me are excess Vitamin D and excess sodium. Ha! I’m supposed to be taking Vitamin D supplements because I’m low on it, but it’s associated with helping the body build up calcium, which is good for the bones but one of the risk factors for calcium oxalate kidney stones. So I’ve cut way down on my Vitamin D intake.
Unfortunately I can’t do much about sodium because it infests just about everything we eat, but I just try to be conscious of it and minimize it when I can. Excess sodium is also famously associated with high blood pressure, of course, and also tentatively linked to stomach cancer.
We would be so much better off as cyborgs who just needed to be plugged in every night for a recharge.
The documentary “Robocop” had a machine dispense some gloop that was “food” he had to eat to maintain his biological parts. Described as tasting like baby food.
I passed a kidney stone a few years ago. It wasn’t fun, but it was bearable. The pain lasted a few days, until the stone passed into the bladder. Pain killers helped a lot.
Your urologist will probably want you to collect the stone for analysis. There are different types of stones, and the particular type you have will help figure out why it formed. In my case, it was a calcium oxalate stone. I had been eating a diet high in oxalates, and have since reduced the amount of oxalate-rich foods that I eat.
Your urologist will probably also recommend drinking a lot of liquids. Diluting the urine helps prevent the formation of kidney stones.
I hope this passes quickly, both literally and figuratively.
I got my first stone way back around 2008 or so when I didn’t have insurance. It started with a dull pain in my lower back and after a while I figured it must have been a kidney stone. I endured the pain until very early in the morning when I decided to go to the emergency room lack of insurance be damned. As I was showering, the pain suddenly went away, but that’s when a constant, intense feeling of needing to pee started. I was able to live with that until the urgent care clinic opened in the morning and I went to see them.
“Yup, you’re right. It’s a kidney stone and there is blood in your urine.” They gave me a diuretic, something else, but not pain meds, and sent me on my merry way. As I was filling the prescription at Sam’s Club I passed the stone in their bathroom. Odd feeling. Picture yourself drinking lemonade and a seed gets stuck in the straw so you blow it out. Pass the stone that way didn’t hurt it just felt odd.
I’ve had stones multiple times since then. For me, it always starts with a dull pain but sometimes it never escalates beyond that and then it subsides. Other times the pain simply intensifies and I can do nothing by lie in bed occasionally turning from side-to-side trying to find a comfortable position. I’ll even get up and walk around the room in the hopes of knocking the sucker loose. I will drink a lot of water to help get things moving.
One time at work, I felt a sharp sudden pain towards the tip of my penis and a had as sudden urge to pee. I passed a surprisingly large stone very unexpectedly and went back to my desk and continued the day.
Well, yeah, I’ll agree. But I also didn’t experience anything like what pkbites describes.
I’ve had quite a number of stones, and they’ve been really variable. The first gave me a day of very uncomfortable urethral irritation - stung every time I peed - then, toward evening it became severe, unrelenting pain in my right testicle.
I went to the E.R. but not until I covered the outside of my girlfriend’s car with vomit. Only reason she didn’t kill me is she thought I was already dying. It took 15 mg of morphine just to take the edge off the pain.
Contrast that with another that went more like: “ooh! ow! I think this might be a kidney stone,” Get up; chug LOTS of water; run in place; shimmy and shake. “Nah, I guess not,” then in 30 minutes, “ooh, ow” and repeat. I finally knew it was a stone when I actually passed it.
I had one stone busted up with focused sound waves. Ninety minutes lying with my lower back on a gel pad with a T.E.N.S. unit in place so that the shock felt no more painful than a weak jab with a dull pencil (60 x a minute).
They’re all different. The only common theme with me is that once it reaches the bladder I’m home free.
Only once have I ever even been aware I was passing one through my urethra, and that’s because it lodged (temporarily!) just shy of the meatus, and something felt funny. Safety tip: do not squeeze the head of your penis when there is a stegosaurus-shaped crystal just inside.
