My very healthy 18 year old son woke up this morning and felt “a little blocked” with some pain when he urinated. A little while later, he tried again and passed some frank blood and a couple of clots. A medical evaluation was started and is awaiting test results but I think it will turn out to be that he passed a small stone.
My question has to do with his diet. He drinks massive amounts of orange juice (often 1-2 quarts a day) and I seem to remember hearing once that this can, counterintuitively, cause the urine to become alkaline. I think the theory was that it had something to do with the body’s efforts to neutralize all the acid. Anybody know for sure what the effects of all this orange juice would be?
(I must admit I am kinda worried about him and hope his lop-sided diet is all we have to worry about.)
Did he feel any pain like a dull ache in his lower back, even off and on prior?
Or, the sensation his bladder is really full and he has to pee really bad, but hardly a trickle comes out?
My experience:
I’ve passed about 9 stones in the last decade (my 30s), and some of them I didn’t feel anything, the ones larger than a mm in size sent me writhing in agonizing pain, on the side the stone was.
My largest stone, 6 mm, got stuck in my ureter, just before falling into my bladder, and had to be removed by a urologist with a scope by going in the “out” way (thank God for general anesthesia).
With all of these, there was never any visible blood, but bleeding does happen, so I’ve heard.
People form stones for many different reasons, which is why a urologist would want the stone so it can be analyzed and determine the cause. In fact, in my particular case, my doc said lemonade might help, it certainly couldn’t hurt, but nothing beats good ol’ H20. I’m sure he’s totally fine, he’ll just have to drink more water and be sure to take the doctor’s advice once there’s been a diagnosis.
It seems the only pain has been in the urethra which doesn’t seem typical for a stone so I’m not sure but it seems possible and probably preferable to alternative diagnoses.
OJ should not alkalinize the urine. OJ and lemonade are both recommended as urine acidifiers for folks who form certain types of stones.
I generally don’t worry about stone composition unless they’re a recurrent problem. Then it’s good to find out not only what the stone’s made of, but also to run both blood and urine tests to see what the various electrolyte and mineral components are.
I am 34 and had this same thing happen to me. A trip to the ER, and follow up with my general physician and a urologist revealed… nothing. I was told not to worry about it unless it happened again, which wasn’t terribly comforting, but there it is. Never had a bit of kidney pain with it.
My personal guess is that in my case, either some greater-than-normal dehydration precipitated a bladder stone, or the chewable “no need for water” fiber tablets I tried for the first time two days prior to the incident caused something to crystalize.
I doubt your son is taking fiber supplementation, and it sounds like it’d be far-fetched for him to be dehydrated, so let us know if the docs find anything interesting!
Mrs. Homie was in the ER on Monday morning, and a CT scan revealed a stone. She was given pain medications and told to wait for it to pass.
I’m assuming that “pass” means “exit the urethra,” with resultant excruciating pain? Or is it possible that “pass” just means for the stone to leave the kidney (meaning that it would leave the urethra unnoticed)?
The ureters (plumbing from the kidney to the bladder) is typically of a smaller diameter than the urethra (plumbing from the bladder to the outside world). The writhing-in-pain, ER variety, kill-me-now, get-it-over-with agony, is usually suffered when the stone is in the ureter. If it finally does pass through the ureter to the bladder, it should be of a small enough diameter to travel the second pipeline to the outside.
Pain would depend on the size of the stone and whether it has a smooth or jagged outer surface. Pain may happen as it passes thru the narrow ureter to the bladder or briefly as it passes thru your lady’s very short urethra (compared to yours or my son’s).
When I had a stone stuck in my ureter, the ER doctor recommended increasing beer consumption as he has said it does help flush things out quite nicely.
Unfortunately it didn’t and someone had to go fetch my 5mm baby.
Yes, thank God. But I didn’t have any when he took the stent out a week later. And there was blood. Holy shit, there was a river of blood.
I think that the worst of it, besides the blood, and the excruciating pain, was when I got the stent out. I was in a little room with two nurses. They had something that looked like scissors with a guitar string attached. A heavy guitar string. Like a low E. They said “Mwa ha ha, we’re going to stick this up your penis. The whole thing!”
I would have punched them out and made my escape, but I didn’t want to get their evil clown makeup all over my knuckles.