Hell hath no fury like Kidney stones!

Holy cow! Sorry to hear about it. Glad you're getting them taken care of soon.
Sounds like an unbearable pain, haha... :eek:

 

I've heard someone who had them describe it as "slowly peeing razor blades", and I somehow think that's playing it down a bit...

Hang in there, fortunately I think it's a somewhat routine condition to treat these days. Meds are good.

 

That's awful! I know what kind of pain those things can give people.. had trouble with them for a few years, because my doctors failed hard.

Dealing with pain

I dealt with the pain using hot baths, showering the abdomen with hot water. Lightly touching and moving around the place where the pain was helped a bit too (touching stimulation can block a tiny amount of pain). Using heat to stop the pain only helped for some time though, so I alternated lying in bed with using hot baths.

Breathing exercises can help a bit too. Slowly breath in and slowly breath out, counting the seconds for inhalation and exhalation. Focus on your breath and breathe using your stomach.

For minor pain, make sure that you stay distracted at all times. Watch long movies without adverts in between for instance.. doesn't help anymore when the pain gets too much sadly.

Sometimes it helped for me to lie flat with legs tucked in. Or lie flat with your legs into the air.

For medicines, anal capsules can be useful if you're not in hospital (especially diclofenac). If there's much pain you can become nauseous, so oral medicines may be thrown up or get dissolved into your blood much slower.

Drinking water

Drinking water (producing >3 L water/day or with some kidney stones even more) helps preventing kidney stones and sometimes can even dissolve them. Drinking water before you go to sleep helps a bit too, because else your urine will be very concentrated during the night so kidney stones can form.

However this is a very very slow process and will not work with bigger ones, so it won't help much when you're currently suffering from a pain attack.. Medical sources don't have evidence currently that drinking water or not drinking water helps or is detrimental during a pain attack.

But.. If a kidney stone is stuck in the ureter (the tube between kidney and bladder), drinking water during a pain attack can cause more pain, because the pressure will build up. So beware of drinking a lot of water during a heavy pain attack.

Test your stones!

Make sure that they test what kind of kidney stones they are when they are removed. When you know what they're made of you know what kind of food to avoid. Some kidney stones are formed by a genetic disease for which medicines are available to prevent the growth.

Good luck with surgery!

PS. I'm not a doctor, so always ask them for advice first. ; )

 

Sorry to hear that! I've never experienced this myself, and I hope I never will.

I've heard of "lithotripsy" to essentially pulverize these stones, has that been considered for you?

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Aww it's awful isn't it!

Bloody things took me out for nearly 3 months over christmas!!

 

My wife frequently said that the kidney stones were worse than childbirth. The lithotripsy may be preferable to surgery (I vaguely remember that they are more likely to recur if the surgical option is used, but that may not be correct)--but even if they're blasted, they still have to pass, which is no picnic regardless. I hope you feel better soon. The only good thing about them is how much better you will feel when they are out of your system. (*hug*)

 

I've only had one stone that refused to pass and swelled my kidney...for those who don't know about kidneys, they aren't supposed to swell. I will gladly dislocated my shoulder AND knee again at the same time then ever go through a stone again...worst 7 hours of my life when it first hit. all the morphine in the world wouldn't help a bit

Then I had the divine pleasure of going through stone retrieval surgery which on a guy is just a *fabulous* recovery...

I feel for you OP...I really do

I am sure the urologist has or will tell you all this

WATER...for the rest of your life...WATER

and some cranberry juice, lemon juice from time to time. raised acidity (in moderation because you don't want to kill your digestive system) can help stop formation of stones

also beware your calcium intake. My stone was probably because I used to chew TUMS all the time

 

Yes!

No. Depends on the type of stone. Some stones require lower pH (higher acidity), some higher pH (lower acidity/higher alkalinity).

A major cause of acidity is the amount of protein and inorganic acid you consume. Protein gets processed in your body into acid compounds which leave your body in urine. Organic acids like citric acid can be digested by your body, so they don't make your urine acidic, but that won't happen with inorganic acids. So if you need a low acidity/high alkalinity/high pH, don't consume litres of coke (which has inorganic phosphoric acid) and countless hamburgers (which contain lots of salt and protein).

Eating less salt can help too. There's a maximal amount of stuff which can be dissolved in water. If you form kidney stones the concentration of the stuff in your urine is too high, so the stuff crystallises into kidney stones. Eat less salt and there's less stuff in the urine, so crystallisation and therefore kidney stone formation is slower. (Same reason drinking lots of water helps, it makes the concentration of stuff in your urine lower).

 

good point. I am not a stone expert and this above post does a better job of explaining. In MY case I needed more acidity because I had a calcium stone but it's true others have stones that require other methods

thanks for the correction

 

I had a cat who had this (or something similar) once. It seemed pretty painful for him.