Kidney Stones

As most people know, kidney stoned are nasty little suckers. I'm not going to go into what they are here - see Wikipedia or other sources for that. I thought I'd document my fun with stones here, partly for your entertainment, and partly for my own memory.

Stone #1 - October 1989

  • woke with ache, didn't know what it was
  • had physical scheduled for that morning anyway
  • collapsed in moaning heap during physical, scared the doctor
  • went to emergency, found my body doesn't like morphine
  • eventually sent home with pain meds and pee strainer
  • stone passed a few days later

Stone #2 - January 1991

  • woke with ache on Sunday morning, 2nd week of Vanessa's new choir job
  • after a couple weeks of painkillers and x-rays, internal lithotripor surgery (ureteroscopy) is decided using a sparker to set up a shock wave to break the stone (see this for a nifty picture)
  • surgery is successful, stent is left there to help healing
  • stent removal a week or so later - rather "memorable" experience, not to be repeated if possible
  • I cut down on my milk intake and we switched back from whole milk (originally for the kids) to 2%. Also tried drinking more water.

Stone #3 - March 2005

  • felt it while at work in the morning
  • drove myself to emergency - bad idea, but I made it
  • waited a long time for attention
  • standard pain control, pee straining
  • follow-up CT scan showed a couple more stones waiting, including one 3mm and one 6mm.

Stone #4 - March 2007

I woke up early on a Sunday morning with a now too familiar acke in my side - here we go again. This time, tho', I had Vanessa drive me in to emergency at St. Vincent's. When she called, they said it would be a wait, but once we were there and they saw me suddenly turn pale and start moaning, they decided I needed a little quicker attention. I suspect the retching that soon followed helped, too.

After being given the standard pain control, the doctor on duty discussed recent findings on the risks of CT scans, and I allowed him to talk me into only doing a KUB x-ray. That was a mistake, because the stone had progressed far enough that it was hidden by the shadow of my pelvis. With little info to go on, he sent me on my way with a percocet perscription and instructions to see my urologist.

A few days later my urologist said to get a CT scan Really Soon so we can figure out what to do, especially knowing what stones we saw waiting last time. Of course, he will be on vacation next week, but one of the other doctors would cover if we needed to do soemthing right away. After a scheduling snafu, I finally got the CT scan the following Thursday (11 days after emergency visit) and had the other doctor look at it that afternoon. He showed me that it was that big stone we saw on the cat scan 2 years ago, only now it has grown to 7.5mm. This one was not going to make it out on its own. After a little hemming and hawing on my part, and a strong suggestion on his part, we scheduled surgery for Friday morning.

The procedure went well - he used laser lithotripsy to cut up the stone. I spent the next couple of weeks peeing blood and passing mini blood clots, but all was soon better. Oh, and this time the stent had a string on it that came all the way out, so removal was a simply pull-here trick. Boy did that feel odd, but it was a lot easier than that last stent.

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