Forget the skywalk stuff....I just spent the last week dealing with a kidney stone that had blocked up the works.

I've been shot through the knee, had an appendicitis, broken my hip, been stitched up more times than I can count, nearly dislocated my right shoulder....and soldiered through all of it.

Hell, I drove myself to and from the hospital for the appendicitis, stopping on the way home to get the prescriptions filled after the surgery.

But this was something else. Real ball-up-and-cry sort of pain, the sort that burns a mark on a man's soul.

I finally collected myself enough to have the wifey drive me to the emergency room (!), where I managed to pace around until the nice medical staff gave me something "much more powerful than morphine."

It took fifteen minutes to grab hold.

Tons of water and a fistfull of percocets (which only seemed to take the edge off while providing the "possible" side effects as a sort of bizarre pharmacutical road-side bingo game), the logjam unwound. The ER doc said it was one big one, but the screen gave another proof - a bunch of little ones that had piled up together.

Still got to go to a urologist (the ER doc said to wait until Monday to give them a chance to unwind and to give him samples of my little gems), but this morning I feel zillions of times better.

One of the worst was that the anti-biotic he gave me contraindicated caffeine. Yes, gentle reader, I have gone a week without coffee. Sigh. I miss coffee. Heck, I'm suprised I haven't picked up an irregular heart beat by going cold turkey like the last time (it's another fun medical story).

I've long been one of those people that can actually perceive and appreciate the lack of pain as much as pain, so today I'm in a very good mood.

Now I have to get back on the moving schedule, which I put off due to the inability to stand up for any amount of time.

this "genital reader" wants to know how kidney stones form- what sort of factors decide who develops them and who doesn't? i hope never to get one.

I feel your pain.
This past January, my niece, who is 17 and now living with us, was complaining that her tummy hurt.
So I checked on her in her room about 30 minutes later
She was mumbling under her breath, "God make it stop." and then launching across the room and throwing herself into the wall. I watched her do this for a few minutes, and then called my Wifey in.
Being the observant Male in the room, I said "Hmmm. This is not good."

Women who have been through both experiences liken a kidney stone equal to the pain of childbirth.

So much for Uncle Bill wanting to walk into her room and tell her to "Cowgirl Up!"

Awesome! I walked to the hospital to get my appendix removed too!

ACK!

I'm with you!

I had a kidney stone myself. Late night Halloween 2007 it decided it wanted out of my kidney. I never had a kidney stone before so I had no idea what was going on.

3m or so I drive myself to the ER, about 20 minutes away. Even stopped for the red lights.

Got to the ER and got nauseous from the experience while walking inside and threw up in a storm drain.

Walked into the ER--and no one is there. "Hello? Emergency...!" I called for a few minutes before someone finally came and processed me.

To be honest, it didn't feel too bad, just strangely abnormal. They asked me what my pain was on the scale of 1 to 10 and I shrugged and said, "I dunno---maybe 3."

"Oh, we better get you on dilaudid right away!"

"Well, I don't think I really need---OOOOO!" I said as they poked the IV into me and I felt the yummy warmth go in.

Then, in my druggy niceness I was sent to CAT scan where they determined I had a stone.

The nurse kept interrupting the best sleep I had in years by asking me if I could provide a urine sample. I told them, "I went to the bathroom before I came here, so I don't have anything" and she said I really had to try.

I tried everything...thinking of waterfalls, oceans, rain--nothing. By about the third try the nurse came back and said "The doctor wants to know what your thoughts on a catheter are."

Upon hearing that, I jumped to my feet and said, "I'll fill it!" And sure enough, I filled the cup to the tippy top!

Well, they released me 3 hours or so later but I wasn't allowed to drive home on account of the Dilaudid. So I had to wait a few hours more for a friend to take me home. Thing was, the stone was still in me.

I went the next day for a follow up x-ray and such, and I thought maybe it passed without my knowing. But, while in the waiting room, BAM it was on the move! It felt it for sure then--but then it subsided.

The X-rays showed I had not one but two stones. That night, the larger of the two passed. But, I think I lucked out because it was a piece of cake. Testing showed it was primarily calcium hydroxolate--not good. So I'm supposed ot be on this diet for it but I'm not following it very well.

My follow up appt lat year showed the 2nd stone, smaller at 2.5mm, is still in me and hasn't grown or moved at all. Some people go all their life without the stone ever passing, they said. They gave me a couple samples of norco just in case, but said if I wanted better meds I'd have to go back to the ER.

So far...so good. No stone passing. But your post reminded me I need another follow-up exam...

v6,
boNes

Do you drink beverages loaded with tannins and phosphosphates such as Red Bull and Iced Tea?

Do you spend an inordinate amount of time holding it in?

Do you work in hot or cold environments and find it difficult to remain hydrated?

Then YOU TOO can feel like you're passing a watermelon through your urinary tract.



Seriously, though, it's a real problem for the guys who man the convoys in Iraq due to all of those factors.

Primarily it is diet. If there is alot of calcium hydroxolate and no way to break it down enough, it can start to deposit in the kidney and build up into the stone. Uric acid is the other kind of stone, but the body usually can break that down over time.

Things that are supposed to be bad for stones are stuff like red meat, caffeine, certain kinds of nuts, and even colored soft drinks. This means not only Coke, but also orange crush, fanta, and the like--(which sucks because I LOVE Mountain Dew).

Staying hydrated and having things like lemon juice in your water (acids help break it down) are supposed to be helpful. But in alot of cases, it's just one of those things that just happens no matter what you do. No rhyme or reason.

But, this too, shall pass.

v6,
boNes

Glad to see you are doing better Dart.

Yea, glad things are doing better!

Welcome to the Kidney Stone club!

I had to drive myself to the ER after 2 days of living with a Kidney Stone. I was living in Alexandria, VA at time...had no friends or family there. I vaguely remember going 90 in a 30 zone and going the wrong way down a one-way street to get to the hospital. My thinking was, if the cops see me, they can just chase me to the hospital.

Funny thing is, when I got to the waiting room, the nurse asked me what was wrong. When I told her, she sent me straight back to a bed ahead of the long-line of other patients waiting (one of which was bleeding). They gave me a needle straight into my back.

Felt REAL happy after that.

I then proceeded to flirt with the nurse operating the X-Ray machine while I was drugged up.

My doctor (a female) said she'd given birth twice, and had a kidney stone...she said she'd rather give birth again.

You really do think you're gonna die.

wowza...glad i'm apparently low risk. so i guess it's only javanese midgets passing through my pee-hole that i need to worry about

Had a couple. Have some forming now. I can feel it in the kidneys.

I had so much blood they gave me a Cystoscopy to check for cancer. All clear but my stones keep re-occurring.
Really sux and yes, man will not know pain like it until he goes through it.

Of course, you can get away with mild pain but if it hits bad, it hurts like nothing you've ever known

Yay! Kidney stone stories!

I have been burned, knifed, and hit in the head with a baseball bat, but I would rather go through all three of those things at the same time than go through another kidney stone episode. I was in the mountains of colorado and I had a strange stomach ache that just wouldn't go away and was getting progressively worse. About 6:00 AM I drove myself to a Safeway store that had just opened and literally crawled through the front door. An employee there drove me to a clinic about 13 miles away and I swear on my grave if I had a gun I would have killed myself during that drive. I always thought I had a high tolerance to pain but I was in so much agony that death would have been welcome - that is no joke.

Makes me wonder how people survive this when they don't have access to medical care.

I feel your pain man. Kidney stones crept into my medical background a few years ago, and I would rather have a another ruptured appendix or a seriously painful bout of lumbar stenosis induced sciatica than pass another one of those puppies. Be careful with those percocets, not only can they kill you, they can also jam up your other excretion mechanism...no fun especially when you're still with the stone. If your stones are the uric acid variety they can be prevented with proper diet (avoiding foods with high purine content) and medication. The calcium variety are somewhat harder to prevent, but I've found that a daily dose of citrate seems to do the trick for me (lemon, cranberry, and the like).

Testicular torsion, now thats pain...

My wifes been through the having kidney stones 6 times since we have been married. 15 years now to.
She says the pain kidney stones far surpasses childbirth or any other injury she has had, including
the 12 knee operations including the rebuild.

Last time she had stones was 4 years ago and they used a new way to break up the stones with
a non-invasive form. They used a laser while she knocked out and passed the broken up stones
a couple days later. No stay in the hospital required. Her first time she had them netted. and
was that the most agony she says you can ever imagine.

I had my kidney stone last year. It was shaped like a bomb or a fish with sharp blades extending from the back of it like fins. It hurt bad enough where I couldn't walk one time. That was the worst it ever hurt which prompted my walk up to the ER after the pain passed. I work at a hospital so it was a short walk.

Later it got down far enough where I go in after it with tweezers cause I wasn't going to let it hang out there any longer than I had to but I didn't think the pain was all that excruciating. I didn't take anything for pain but they did give me a prescription for percocet just in case I wanted it. The main body was about the size of a pencil eraser plus the fins.

Best way - be Caucasian, male, and over 35.

According to what I read, anyhow.

If one is an aging White dude, all the other factors for kidney stones are just a plus, as one can get them just for being an aging White dude.



The weird thing is that I can feel them in my right kidney.

LOL on the urine sample - I gave a pitiful effort; however, it was later determined that there was most definately a cork in the bottle.

too much calcium, not driking enough water (this is a serious threat), and they may acumulate on their own.

Cry like a baby..hah!... I screamed my lungs out in the ER a couple of years ago. This was after I had collapsed and passed out at home. Luckily I had been able to call the ambulance just before that. In the ER they gave me mild pain killers and only after 2 hours of incessant screaming on my part did they give me morphine. Then I had to 'try' and give a urine sample. This they mixed up with another man's sample, (I discovered later), because they send me home, stating I had indigestion...ehehehe. 1 day later I ended up in a university hospital, where they discovered that my left kidney was filled to the brim with stones, thanks to the side effects of a medical treatment I had had a year before.

That kind of pain I would not wish on my worst enemy. A stabbing and a serious motorcycle accident were nothing compared to kidney stones.