Four-time kidney stone passer. I’ve also had second degree burns over 10% of my body. The stones are a close second in pain.
I keep major narcotic painkillers in my home arsenal (legal oxycontin prescription). Kidney stones tend to recur and sitting in the emergency room in agony while the staff try to figure out what’s wrong sucks. They won’t give you painkillers before they diagnose and I’ve passed stones twice while waiting. I take a couple of oxycontin *before* I leave for the hospital now. YMMV
Yup - you can have all of mine. Im just a stone factory. My favorite position is hugging the toilet like I had too much tequila. I always end up asking for God to take me now.
Haven't had any to speak of since I quit drinking 6 or so diet cokes a day.
Water, water, water.
Keep those kidneys wet!
They tried to get one out of me, up thru the you know what.
Couldn’t find it so the doc puts in a stint. Fail!
when they took out the stint, I was wide awake, don’t go there!
After straining my urine for over a year it came out, HUGH!
Yup, had one for the past month or so until it passed last night. Bizarre ailment: intermittent bouts of excruciating pain amid otherwise seemingly perfect health.
Actually, when I was in pain, I had the feeling I must have lucked out given how bad the descriptions of renal colic (the technical name for the pain) are, though now, in retrospect, I can’t recall ever having had worse pain from any cause.
For the pain, besides strong pain-killers, heat is beneficial (or so I found, in agreement with some online sources).
I have had at least a dozen of them.
I have found a few interesting things about them. First, the SouthEast U.S. is the kidney stone belt but they still do not know exactly wy.
The last one I had, they did the MRI and the doctor said I had one in my left kidney which was so large it will not move. The ones hurting and they kept doing so for 9 days, were three tiny ones, about the size of a grain of sand each.
The only really large one I have had actually did not hurt as much as some of the smaller ones. It did pass into my bladder and kept irritating me for over a month before I fianlly passed it. It did not hurt at all when I passed it but I did notice it. I actually saw it hit the grass as I was urinating outside in a pasture.
I picked it up and later washed it (and my hands) off carefully and looked it over. It was about the size and shape of the fingernail of my pinky. It had one side which was very jagged while the other was smooth and had several tiny BB like impressions which I assume came from the kidney.
When a really bad one hits you, you will double over then fairly soon throw up. This keeps happening until it passes, usually within a few hours but like I said, one lasted off and on for 9 days.
The pain medication only helps a little bit when it really hurts.
I offered mine (after it “passed”) to the CIA. I figure they can inject that baby into a BG and he will tell them anything they want to know!
I’ve had gall stones, nasty too. IF you supplement calcium, you MUST take magnesium otherwise it will give you kidney stones.
Try having a kidney stone on a mountain peak at 13000 feet.
The thing is that it gets easier with each successive stone.
Wait until you pop 30 or more - then it hardly phases you.
Never!
I drink too much beer for that to happen.
Three years ago they found a 7mm kidney stone during a sonogram for another condition, but it wasn’t bothering me. Three months ago I broke my femur while skiing, and they found prostatic calcifications during the CT scan. I started taking magnesium several weeks ago for that. My kidney stone really started hurting 3 days ago, breaking up from the magnesium. Almost as bad as the broken leg. Make sure to take zinc/magnesium. I got a copy of the CT scan on disk. You can see all of the calcifications very clearly.
You’ll need to know what it’s made of to know how to treat it. I used to drink a lot of cokes. Mine were made of calcium oxcilate. I don’t recall the chemical formulae, but it uses the CO2 in the cokes. I’d give up tea and fizzy drinks if I were you. Drink plenty of water. I went from having several a year to none in the last 25 years; just by drinking no cokes and plenty of water. (Tap water, at that!)
BTW, save some of the pain meds. Kidney stones always seem to hit on a Friday night. With enough pain meds you can wait until Monday and go see your regular doctor. Frankly, I’d rather die than go to the emergency room. I don’t speak any Spanish.
Despite the label warning; five, ten and fifteen year old pain meds work fine. (Well, not quite as well, but the only thing that will actually kill you if it’s too old is Tetracycline.)
I personally have never had them. My daughter has and I’ve never seen anyone go through so much pain. She was told that it is epidemic in the south because of the heat and people not consuming enough water. She had to undergo a treatment in the hospital but all of them did not break up or pass.
I think there are two health issues with pain that will make a grown man cry and that’s kidney stones and shingles.
Yes, only once, and it must have been too small to be seen because the doc I rushed to as the pain grew steadily worse over a couple hours, didn’t believe me. He thought I was a drug addict. It was a horrible experience.
While I was in his office, where he DID give me a shot of morphine but then was audible as he told others he thought I was a drug addict begging for a shot, which I was NOT (I didn’t even want a shot or rather was scared to get one as I was alone and didn’t know how drugged I would be). My husband came and explained things to the doctor and he softened a little.
That pain is just creepy. It’s like this hot pain that gets slowly worse and worse in the side of your back. It’s not like any other kind of pain. I could not sit in the waiting room but had to PACE. I did not care about embarrassment; it just went beyond that. My friend had it too once, again too small to be seen but then after it passed there was some “scraping” visible on her urethra so they dx’ed it after the fact. I figured mine was similar.
I spoke to a lot of people who had had one, and most of them had been taking oral calcium supplements, as had I for the first time in my life, so I immediately stopped taking them. Not medically sure there was a connection, but that was the ONLY time I’d ever taken those chewable calcium tablets, and I never had a kidney stone again - it was about 6 years ago.
Had a friend years ago that had a really bad stone. He drove himself to the ER and was finally taken back to an exam room. After waaaay-to-long of a wait he got himself up off the gurney and then accosted a nurse to complain. The nurse says “look we can give you something for pain once you are undressed and prepped.” So my buddy starts disrobing right then and there. Nurse exclaims “what do you think you are doing?” Buddy answers “I’m getting undressed just like you said!” “But wait-I’m still IN here,” she shreiks. Phil responds with “Well lady, you’re a nurse and if you see something you ain’t ever seen before then I suggest you throw a shoe at it-I GOTTA HAVE SOME RELIEF!”
I had one at age 11 and 14. They are VERY painful. A good way to tell the difference between a kidney stone and appendicitis is that usually with a kidney stone you are agitated and can’t find a comfortable position, with your appendix you do not want to move.
The wife did, and before she passed it, she said some bad words I never even knew she was aware of.
The attending nurses just shrugged it off, said they had heard lots worse from big brawny men passing a kidney satone.