Usual disclaimers: I have seen my doctor and he has ordered a CT scan to see what is going on. I’m in that lovely waiting period in between.
What I’m soliciting from you is just experiences. I had a trace of blood in my urine, a bit of a fever and some general discomfort in the usual areas (lower back and lower front on one side). But all the anecdotes I’ve ever heard make kidney stones sound worse than childbirth. Not that I’m complaining, but it seems strange.
What experiences have Dopers had with this sort of thing? What treatments did you need? What lifestyle changes did you have to make and that sort of thing.
This is a bit of a hijack, but I was in a meeting yesterday with an administrator of the urology department at one of our hospitals, and in their conference room, they had a nice display of kidney stones and bladder stones, set in Lucite. You probably don’t think of your kidney stones in terms of decor, but somewhere out there is a urologist who does.
Anyway, I have nothing more to offer, other than my best wishes.
Weight loss, excercise, hydration, learn to take breaks, etc…
I work in construction/remodel and am in danger of overexertion, so I make sure to drink plenty of fluids, avoid heavy lunches in hot weather, and take a damn break when I get tired. According to my doctor, I was pushing myself way too hard in hot weather.
But, weight loss and hydration are the two biggest things keeping me out of the ER a second time. That huge stone came as quite a shock to this hearty redneck.
Hmm. I rarely get dehydrated–I’m doing Weight Watcher’s and always have a big mug of water on my desk. I have been bad about exercise lately, though. I’m not overweight, but I probably do eat too much salt and protein.
I’m the sort of person who gets gout, so it makes sense that my stone was of the uric acid type–invisible to X-ray.
They had to go get it. At least I was asleep for that part. I was awake when they took the stent out 5 days later. Double-plus unpleasant, but those without prostates would probably find it not too uncomfortable.
Lifestyle changes? Not much, other than staying hydrated. I’ve learned to avoid some things that cause gout flare-ups, and I hope that works to prevent kidney stones as well.
As for how it felt… It was like getting kicked in the nards once a minute for a few hours. That is, until I got to the hospital. Then, morphine became my closest friend.
Not me, but my husband has had about 3 or 4. From observation, the experience seemed to be excruciating. He was willingly taking any painkiller they’d give him, although he usually won’t even take an aspirin for a headache. A couple just eventually passed naturally, with great agony. One he had “blasted” by ultrasound to break it up. His doctors told him there was not really much he could do; his body just seems to have the unfortunate trait of spontaneously creating these things. From what I observed, I’d rather go through labor.
Well, I put kidney stones at #1 out of three in the “worst pain you’ve ever experienced” thread, two slots ahead of “running through a glass door”. So yeah, they can suck.
In my first experience it was a sudden near-blinding pain ( after shifting positions slightly while reading on a couch ), bad enough to cause vomiting and leave me curled up on the bathroom floor in near-paralysis. No blood in urine and when it stopped ( in the hospital emergency.room ) it was like flipping a light switch to a merciful “off”.
Next time it was a slightly slower onset that started with the dull pain associated with the distant aftermath of getting whacked in the testicles. It slowly ( over an hour ) progressed to immediate aftermath-of-getting-whacked-in-the-testicles, to an excrutiating agony that was however not quite as bad as the first experience ( no vomiting and I retained a miserable full mobility ) and faded in and out over the course of an evening and ached slightly for a few days afterwards. This time there was copious blood in the urine for a few hours.
In neither case was a stone found and because of the suspiciousness of that I went through multiple tests the second time to check for any other conditions. Ultimately though the figure it was just a diffuse “paste” or small/fragmented stones that passed unnoticed. In neither case did I ever get more than a mild burning while urinating, so whatever it was, it wasn’t huge.
My doctor ( the urology dept. head at the hospital ) was of the opinion that changes in diet are generally ineffective ( or at least unproven ) at preventing reoccurrences and the only useful option was to remain well-hydrated at all times and that the addition of a little lime or lemon juice to any liquids imbibed might be helpful.
I like mine so much they don’t want to leave. I mean, they have large rooms to bounce around in (my kidneys are quite large due to polycystic kidney disease), lots of hiding places (see same), and have friends to play with (last count 5 in my left kidney, 2 in my right - that was a year ago).
They flare up every once in a while, but I make sure I am hydrated, lay off the calcium when they’re cranky, and baby my kidneys as much as possible.
I never had one, but my best friend from school did. He was in the hospital for a while, and I sent him a card that said “Cheer up! At least you passed something this term!”
He brought the kidney stone to school in a jar, showed it to me, and told me how he was going to cook it into my lunch sometime for making him laugh that hard.
Kidney/liver transplant patient speaking. I had both my native kidneys removed due to oxalate overload and multiple stones, and had the liver replaced that was the cause of the problem.
There’s two kinds of kidney stone pain: when the stone passes from the kidney to the bladder via the ureter, and when it passes out of the bladder via the urethra.
The former hurts a lot, as in lie-on-the-floor and give-up-and-cry hurts, in my experience. There is no way to make it hurt less by rolling on your side. In fact, that’s how I generally knew the problem: with other sources pain, you can often alleviate it by changing your sleeping position, or massaging the area, but kidney stones hurt no matter what you do.
The latter wasn’t so bad — less painful to me than having my blood drawn a flu shot — as long as I stayed hydrated and the stone kept moving. (They can get stuck, but that only happened to me once.) By the time I realized it hurt and I feel my muscles tense in preparation for the pain, the stone has already passed. And I passed a lot of stones, and stone fragments.
I work in a hospital, in Radiology, and kidney stones are a rather common complaint among our patients, so it’s not an uncommon topic of discussion among the staff.
Whenever I’ve asked women who’ve both borne children and suffered through a kidney stone which pain was worse, without exception they’ve said that kidney stone was much, much worse. It’s more intense and, unlike labor pains that come and go, kidney stone pain stays.
I should also add that there was a person in one of my classes that had a kidney stone attack as she went into labor.
Mine were mild compared to the stories that I have heard. I had some bad nights, but no where nearly as bad as some that I have heard. In the end I passed mine and it was about the size of a grain of rice.
At the time, one of my younger sisters worked in the hospital I was taken to.
Ahhh drugs… While I waiting for then to decide what to do, I said I had to “P”. they gave me a strainer just in case. I could barely stand on my own.
I passed it. Did not look like much to me, about a .22 slug looking thing.
My sister thought otherwise, grabbed the strainer and it’s cargo that I had brought back into the room and I could hear her as she went up and down the ER showing docs and nurses, and saying, “Look at what my brother just passed,”
The first time I had kidney stones I went to the emergency room and they admitted me and kept me for three days under, what I’m sure were excessive amounts of illegal substances (for me to obtain), until I passed the stones and went home thinking that the whole experience wasn’t too bad (except I couldn’t remember my name or anything else of any importance).
The second time, about 12 years later, they wouldn’t even let me stay in the emrgency room or admit me and they wouldn’t give me anything but told me to take tylenol and I would pass the stone without any problem. I spent every waking minute, for three days, swearing revenge on them for the “cruel and unusual punishment” that they forced upon me. I, as a member of the male species, have never undergone childbirth, but I can tell you that the time was spent under mind boggling pain. I think I stopped taking in any fluids to prevent the need to use my bladder for any purpose but even that didn’t stop the pain. I think that my free time was spent leaving less than savory suggestions on messages to my doctor. Not a fun experience.
The second time has now been 15 years ago and since then I drink anything acidic that I can anytime that I’m awake. If it’s alkaline and has calcium then I avoid it except for ice cream. My antidote for taking in too much ice cream is a healthy dose of carrot juice or vinegar (though not at the same time).
Don’t know if I helped but my two journeys were enough to convince me that there are times that the derivatives of the poppy family can certainly be your best friend.
I ended up passing four stones over a three-year period beginning in 1996. At the time I was living in Paris and I now suspect that drinking the local, apparently calcium-rich water may have had something to do with it.
The first one was the worst. I woke up early one Friday morning with a blinding pain in my gut, the worst I had ever experienced. I actually got dressed and made it to work, but almost immediately asked to be transported to a medical facility. The tentative diagnosis was appendicitis, and I ended up spending the weekend in a suburban clinic, watching the world championships of Petanque on TV. On Monday a urologist came by and correctly diagnosed the stone. Ultrasound analysis revealed the others. I went home with an open prescription for anti-inflammatories and painkillers.
The first, estimated at about 5mm in diameter, took a total of about six months :eek: to pass. I had at least four major episodes of spasmodic pain, usually lasting about two days each, before the damn thing cleared my system. After that, the others were a walk in the park by comparison. I had moved back to the States by the time the last one passed. I felt the familiar pain again, drove to the local ER, asked for some painkillers, sat in a treatment room for a few hours until I actually felt the thing pop out from the ureter into the bladder, thanked the staff for their assistance and went home. Haven’t had a problem since. As others have mentioned, I’ve made a point of keeping hydrated, and try to limit my intake of calcium.