I’m a 17 year old male and somehow I manage to get a kidney stone. No one else in my family has had one so i have no one to ask what it was like. So…If theres anyone out there thats had one and would like to share please let me know what it was like. According to my CT scan mines about 8mm. It passed through my kidney but its still in me somewhere, probably my bladder. Let me know what it was like, how long it took to pass and what size it was if you know. Hopefully Ill get some responses before anything happens! Thanks
Passing a kidney stone through your bladder is reliably reported to be the worst pain in the world, worse even than having a baby, or a heart attack.
http://members.aol.com/rogerbaxtr/pages/Kidney_Stone_Page_1b.html
now aren’t you glad you asked?
heh
One of my groomsmen passed a kidney stone the day of my wedding! He was OK by that evening. Maybe more than OK; he was on drugs the whole night. 
He had quite an excruciating experience, which makes me wonder about yours. His pain was mostly when it was going from kidney to bladder. You state “*t passed through my kidney”, but they don’t go through the kidney. They’re formed in the kidney and pass through tubing to the bladder.
8 mm seems big for a stone; I think my friend’s was 2-3 mm. Maybe yours is still in your kidney, being too massive to go elsewhere.
My friend said that passing it must be aking to the labor pains of expectant mothers. And the worst part is that you can’t cuddle and snuggle with the kidney stone once it’s out. :D:D
AWB - I meant to say it was passing out of my kidney on its way to my bladder. As far as I can tell after recieving some nice drugs through my IV it passed through my ureter into my bladder with only about and hour of pain before getting into the ER and getting the drugs. So, if it is in my bladder as I expect is the worst part of the pain over or is it gonna be even worse exiting my body??
The worst is probably over once the stone has reached the bladder. That said, 8mm is kind of large to pass thru the urethra. Hope you misunderstood about the size. Do save the stone for testing once you pass it (I assume they told you to strain your urine). Different types of stones require different dietary modifications to prevent or reduce future stone formation. However, it is recommended you increase your fluid intake no matter what kind of stones you make.
Best of luck - hope you don’t have to go thru this again.
Thanks ejrn! No, i didnt misunderstand the size the doctor said 8mm which is pretty damn big! Yeah…increase in fluids and i have a nice strainer and i container to put it in once it passes. I’ll keep you posted while i wait for some more reactions and experiences.
8 mm is 5/16". I had a stone that was probably no more than 0.8 mm. I find it hard to believe that a stone of 8 mm could get possibly get through the ureter (mine, anyway), given that my stone–about the size of a grain of sand–got hung up going through. Once it was in the bladder, no sweat–didn’t even feel it going through the ureter.
I can’t imagine a stone of 8 mm going through anyone’s urethra, either. But assuming your stone can get through, the bladder has muscles to add to the fluid pressure. I assume that would help if it started getting stuck.
Whoops!–didn’t even feel it going through the ureter.–that was supposed to be urethra.
How do kidney stones form? And does anyone know of any preventative measures to take to avoid getting them?
TRex
My brother had his first kidney stone when he was 22, and another one the year after that-- both were 2-3 mm.
It was the most painful thing he’s ever experienced, and each time he ended up spending about 3 days flat on his back. Except it was too painful to lie on his back.
He used to drink litres of milk and coffee or tea daily. He’s now cut back severely on both.
My husband also gets kidney stones. His doctor says his are mostly calcium from high dairy intake…he drinks a lot of milk used to take a lot of Tums. He won’t stop drinking milk, but is now taking Nexium (sp?) for acid reflux and heartburn so he isn’t taking Tums anymore.
Do you drink a lot of milk or eat a lot of dairy products?
Save the stone in that neat little “party hat” they gave you so they can determine what it’s made of.
As others have said, preventative diet and lifestyle changes depend on the type of stone you form, so strain the pee and consult the doctor. However, I can tell you to drink lots and lots of water. This will keep you hydrated and hopefully wash out the little stones before they become big ones.
I had a stone four years ago and have so far managed to avoid a recurrance by exercise, greatly reducing my caffine intake (that one was a bitch, let me tell you), totally cutting out caffinated and carbonated soft drinks (come to think of it, that was a bitch, too) and reducing the amount of animal protien in my diet by having several vegetarian meals a week (three or four).
YMMV, but so far so good on this end.
Oh, yeah, my husband also drank a lot of soda.
He’s cut way back on that, too.
Oh god. Kidney stones. The term sends shivers up my spine. Prior to experiencing them, I had no idea that you could vomit simply from pain. I ended up in the emergency room, screaming for morphine, barfing on nurses who were holding up a chart and asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 through 10.
I will say, however, that you’re lucky that you KNOW what it is. They wouldn’t give me pain medication until they figured out whas was causing the pain, which meant that I screamed through various and sundry medical tests before getting demerol. I wonder if there’s a way you can have pain meds handy just in case? I know docs don’t like to hand them out unless it’s absolutely necessary, but perhaps in your case they would be understanding.
My brother began getting kidney stones regularly at the age of 16. Some of them he was able to pass, painfully, but some of them had to be broken up inside his body using some sort of sonic bombardment. After the first half-dozen, the docs figured something weird was up.
Turns out he had an extremely rare genetic disorder called, IIRC, primary hyperoxalosis. I don’t recall the exact specifics of the disease, but roughly, there’s something wrong with the liver such that it sends out the wrong chemical signals, which causes the kidneys to be unable to process oxalic acid (or produce extra; I’m hazy on the details). The excess oxalic acid builds up in the body and crystallizes, sort of like the old kids’ science experiment about hanging a string in a jar of sugar water. It’s these crystalline accretions that are passed as kidney stones.
Over time, the disease is very fatal. The crystals build up in the kidneys and eventually cause them to fail (my brother is on his second transplanted kidney; his original two are gone, as is the first transplant he received), as well as mucking up the joints, the fluid inside the eyeballs, and so on. There’s no cure (until gene therapy is perfected), so the only treatment is a liver transplant, which he got last September 12 (boy, wasn’t that a fun week).
So that’s one way kidney stones can form. Note that the disease above is very rare, and usually manifests before the age of ten. However, it didn’t appear in my brother until he’s about the same age you are. Don’t worry about it yet, but if you start getting lots of kidney stones without any other explanation, you might want to look into this possibility.
And yeah, he said pissing out the stones was like having broken glass shoved up his wingwang. So good luck…