I had a moderately bad bladder infection. I drank lot of fluid, unsweetened cranberry and blueberry juice, and tried to rest. Wasn’t working, so I called my internist. At first she gave me sulfa, and my minor pain turned into terrible “please, please kill me” pain straight through my lower right abdomen after I started on it. Called the Dr. back, she confirms that I did have a lot of bacteria and white cells in my urine, and she thinks the pain is due to kidney infection. She switches me to Cipro (better kidney penetration, she says) and says to call her back if I’m not feeling better in 24-48 hours. I’ve taken the Cipro today, and this evening the pain has seemed to radiate up my whole right side. Even my right breast hurts, and I have to breathe shallowly because breathing deeply hurts, on my right side. My left side is totally fine and dandy. The discomfort on urination has gone away. But my right side just hurts terribly. Being in a hot bath eases the pain a bit, but I can’t stay in the bath all day. Heating pads help a little bit… but not that much. I’m taking as much ibuprofen as I think is prudent. I’m drinking marshmallow root tea, recommended by the friendly local hippie health food store clerk, which seems to help for a little while. But it still hurts. Anyone have any tips on what can ease the pain until the damn Cipro starts working?
What’s the pain on a scale of 1 - 10?
I think you should call your doctor and ask her to call in a prescription for some pain medicine. Seems like the Cipro hasn’t kicked in quite yet, and there’s no need for you to be hurting and suffering that badly.
The nurse asked me that, too, and I said 6. I’ve never liked the number pain scale. I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around it; I never feel like I’ve given the “right” number to describe it. “Please kill me now” seems more descriptive. (I’m not serious, of course-- that would be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but that’s what I feel like at the moment.) When I had my baby, they did my epiural when I was about 4, and they told me most women ask for it at 2. This is worse than labor pains. They didn’t even suggest pain pills. I hated to ask, because they it would seem I was making everything up to get narcotics, or something. Actually, I would never do that because I don’t tolerate narcotics very well at all-- they make me terribly nauseated. When I do take them I usually take the minimum dose to avoid the nausea. I’m already somewhat nauseated, and the thought of taking narcotics makes me feel even more so. There is nothing I hate worse than nausea and vomiting. But this pain is no picnic, either. I’m going to call in the morning if I’m not feeling better.
Have you ever had a kidney stone? You should be reevaluated just in case.
If any health care professional looks askance at a request for pain medication for kidney pain, they are channeling Dr Josef Mengele. Kidney infections are painful… ASK! They just forget, after all, they aren’t feeling it.
Something like Ultram® shouldn’t cause more nausea.
Check with you health care provider before taking NSAID*s. If you do happen to have a stone, the NSAIDs could cause bleeding. Its a reach, but why take the chance.
No suggestions, just sympathy.
Poor baby 
oooo deep sympathy…definitely call back and ask for pain meds. Since you and your doc seem to have a good working relationship, they should realize you arent looking for a drug hookup, and anybody with a kidney infection will be in a certain amount of pain…I know last one I had felt like someone had taken a baseball bat [cricket bat for you brits 
] and slamed me about where my right kidney was on my back/side
But I was warned to go easy with heat, it isnt a muscle problem it is an infection problem and supposedly heat can make the microbes very happy to multiply…
Oh, and find your hot tea of preference and do lots of liquids, I liked combining a ginger/mint with a chammomile and a slice of lemon with splenda[would have been honey but i am diabetic]
Well, the pain scale runs from, “What pain? Everything’s fine, pass the humus” (1)to “OHMIGAWD Kill me now this is the worst pain I’ve ever felt.” (10) So, even if you don’t think it’s the worst pain you ever *could * feel, it sounds like the worst pain you ever *have * felt, which would make it a 9 or 10. Especially if you have labor to compare it to. Labor tends to hover around 6 or 7. The only thing I’ve personally felt worse than labor was when I severely sprained an ankle last month. And even then, it was intermittent pain, yours sounds pretty constant.
There’s no reason to be brave. Call them up and get yourself taken care of. It does sound an awful lot like stone pain, in which case, it will pass (pun intended) but there’s no reason to suffer while you wait.
Home remedies for kidney and urinary tract infections include the ubiquitous cranberry juice (NOT cocktail! Stay away form sugar). There was a study about three years ago that showed that blueberries may be even more effective than cranberry, so if you can get your hands on some fresh blueberries, eat a cup or so a day until the pain goes away.
If it’s simply an infection and not stones, Marshmallow’s good, but it actually extracts best as a cold infusion, rather than in a hot tea. (Soak a few teabags in cold water for several hours and then gulp down the resultant goo.) Cornsilk is another good urinary tract demulcent. It can be combined with marshmallow and there are no reported contraindications or side effects.
If it is stones and you’d like suggestions for treating herbally, let me know.
Why would they think you’re making everything up when they have the lab results that clearly show you aren’t? Definitely ask for something for the pain, and be sure to tell them that most narcotics make you nauseous. I’ll second picunurse’s suggestion of Ultram, and third the vote on being checked for stones. If you have a stone (which, take it from me, will cause “ohmygodjustkillmenow” pain), and the stone is untreated, the infection may not clear up completely. This is because (at least according to my urologist), infection can actually hide inside the stone, where the antibiotics can’t effectively get to it.
Take care of yourself.
Uh yah, I would say that if your current pain is worse than labour pain, you should head to a hospital or clinic (or Drs office) and get some pain medication.
A shot of Toradol in the butt can do wonders.
Your antibiotic should kick in within 24-36 hours, and the pain should dissipate somewhat around that time.
I totally sympathize with you. At 24 weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and was put on Ampicillin. A month later, it was still there, and it was back to the ampicillin. The next diagnosis was bladder infection, and I’ve been on Cephalexin (Keflex) for two weeks, and will likely be for another two weeks. I can not wait to have this baby so I can take a killer antibiotic that will get rid of it once and for all.
Oh, and I can’t take anything for the pain (even though at the moment I’m not symptomatic) either. Wheee.
Clearly you’re qualified to make the comparison, but I’m pretty sure that if a man ever tried to compare a sprained ankle to the pain childbirth, he’d be laughed out of the room (and probably kicked in the behind on his way out)!
Yep, it sure shocked me! 
I even mentioned when I posted about it that I could no longer hold the Conspiracy of Womanhood. Some pain *is * worse than labor pain. Of course, not much lasts quite as long or intensely as labor. But nothing else produces such a cool outcome, either. So there you go.
MinniePurl, how are you doing today?
Had me puzzled, too! I’d put my broken ankle three years ago at a 6 or 7 … and unrelieved * labour pain at, oh, around 12.
How exactly is the “pain scale” supposed to work, when pain is so subjective?
WhyNot - could you point me in the direction of the blueberry study? I have urology issues, and must take cranberry capsules for the rest of my life. Just wondering if blueberry is a viable alternative.
- Not from choice, I assure you. :eek:
The pain scale is most useful for figuring out if a pain treatment is working. It’s not so much the number you give before treatment, but how it relates to the number you give after meds are given. If it goes down, then you’re on the right track. It’s over time that the pain scale is most useful. For determining if someone is “faking” pain, it’s easy enough to take a blood pressure and check respiration and heart rate. If they’re not elevated, the body’s not in that much distress, and narcotics are not as freely given, even if the patient is claiming a pain level of 10.
While I don’t remember where I saw the article I read (I think it was JAMA about three years ago), I did find these two studies supporting blueberries for UTI treatment. There are hundreds for cranberry, but not so many for blueberry.
Ofek I, Goldhar J, Zafriri D, Lis H, Adar R, Sharon N. Anti-Escherichia coli adhesin activity of cranberry and blueberry juices. New England Journal of Medicine 1991;324(22):1599.
Schmidt BM, Howell AB, McEniry B, Knight CT, Seigler D, Erdman JW Jr, Lila MA. Effective separation of potent antiproliferation and antiadhesion components from wild blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Ait.) fruits.
J Agric Food Chem. 2004 Oct 20;52(21):6433-42.
Well, at noon I called in to try to get some kind of pain meds. They didn’t like the way I was breathing (I have to breathe shallowly because of the pain, and it makes me sound like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle.) so they had me go into the clinic. The nurse examined me, then called in the doctor, who was worried that perhaps I had a kidney abcess or a kidney stone on top of the obvious kidney infection. But, they couldn’t do the ultrasound or CAT scan of my kidneys there, so they wanted me to go into the ER (this was at 4 pm.) She called both the local Kaiser hospitals to see which one was free, because she didn’t want me waiting around all night. I went to the one downtown where the ER doctor she talked to said to come right in and I’d be seen right away. After being in the waiting room for hours, missing my dose of Cipro, having no fluids and being in horrible pain, I said to hell with it and went home, where at least I could have fluids, Cipro, heating pads and ibuprofen. Nobody gave a crap except the pharmacist, who gave me a sample of Advil and told me where the water fountain was. I’m going to call my doctor tomorrow and see if she can set up these tests. I got some of the 8 hour self-heating pads you can strap on yourself, and that helps more than anything.
MinniePurl, it sucks that you’re having such a hard time getting some tests run! Hopefully, your doctor will give you something for the pain, and set up the tests so that you don’t have to sit in the ER for hours!
Now I may not even need anything for the pain. I came home, took my Cipro, had a little something to eat*, and went to sleep with my heating pad strapped to the right side of my ribcage. (These are the low-heat ones that are designed to be worn for long periods of time.) I woke up feeling better and not having the bad pain or difficulty breathing. I’m still hurting a bit, but I think I’ll be fine with ibuprofen and heating pads. I’m going to see if my doctor even wants me to do these tests anymore. I’m also going to tell her that I’m very angry that I’ve been in terrible pain for two days, and I just got run on a wild goose chase all over town, and no one ever gave me anything to releive it.
(Side note: those frozen Yakitori sticks at Sam’s Club? Not good- don’t buy 'em.)
MinniePurl, your doctor may still want you to get a CT Scan or X-ray, because if it is a stone, it can continue to cause problems, intermittently, until it’s out of you. One of the problems it can cause is that it can move to where it blocks the urethra, making urine back up into your blood stream. I’ve had this condition before, and it damned near killed me (no exaggeration; it really did almost kill me from the blood sepsis it caused). Glad the pain has abated, though. Definitely voice your displeasure to your doc.
I did talk to my doctor and she said that unless I start getting worse again, she doesn’t see the need for a kidney ultrasound right now. And today, she asked me “Do you need anything for pain?” I told her, “Not today-- I needed it yesterday and the day before.”