Has anyone passed a kidney stone? How painful was it?

i did last summer..i was dehydrated due to drinking sat. nite and running the next day w/o proper liquids..

the pain feels like a very sharp back ache... the pain was constant no matter what position i tried in order to alleviate the pain.. i broke out into a cold sweat.. then i knew something was "very" wrong..

i drove myself to the emergency.. the nurse took sample of my urine and blood.. found a very small minute amt of blood in my urine..

i received morphine for the pain..later they told me it was a kidney stone and in time it will pass..

the not knowing part was probably the worst.. more worst than the pain.. at least then i would know i would be o.k and the pain would eventually subside..

Scared the hell out of me.I was actually driving when it began. I thought that I was having a heart attack or something. My arms were tingling and partially numb, I had stomach cramps and was sweating bullets.

That was followed by nausea and throwing up. The scariest thing was that I didn't know what it was.

Passing the actual stone (it leaving my body) was minor. It was the beginning that's the worst.

The lady who lived across the street from me at the time had 5 children and said that kidney stones were worse than childbirth.

A quote from the attending nurse in urgent care:

"This feeling is as close as you will get to that of having a baby."

has anyone under age 40 had kidney stones?

Mine was so similar to yours. I was not watching my hydration and was obviously dehydrated. It started while I was sleeping and was in the lower back, and wouldn't go away. Eventually, I sat on the toilet stool, but went into heavy sweats and ended up in the fetal position on the floor. I didn't know what was wrong but had my wife take me to emergency. While lying on the hospital bed, they gave me a pain shot (morphine?) and said it would take about 15 to work and ease the pain. Within about 5 minutes, suddenly I had another huge pain and rolled on my side. Then as quickly as it came on, it was gone--the stone had passed. About a day later, I retrieved the "stone", about the size of a grain of sand. Unbelievable how something this small can hurt so much.

I think this is somewhat common to runners. You have to stay hydrated. For me, it was a couple weeks of not being able to run fast anymore (relatively) and not knowing why. Then, it was one night of alternating sitting on the toilet and rolling on the floor in pain. I never did go to a doctor until the next day. They ended up putting a laser up there and that hurt like hell too. With all the screaming and yelling, someone finally got wise and put me out. I was peeing chunks for a week.

finnishguy wrote:

has anyone under age 40 had kidney stones?

My wife had one last year when she was 39. Neither of us knew what was going on. The pain was so bad that she couldn't really talk. She was on the floor writhing and groaning, and we both thought she was dying. If there's another one, it will be as painful but at least we'll know what it is, and I'll take an extra 8 seconds to grab a book before heading off to the emergency room.

My son had them this summer, at 17.

My supervisor also had them when he was ~30.

This thread makes me feel like crap

I've had six kidney stones, and I'm 26.

The first one I had was at 19---it was the unbelievably worst pain I'd ever experienced. I just got back from a morning run (I was training at altitude at the time), had the urge to take a piss, had some really sharp pain, and pissed blood. I wanted to go to the hospital but a couple of minutes later I got the lower back and side pain (which they call colic) which was like three guys taking a baseball bat to my side. I went to piss again and I passed the stone. I broke out in a cold sweat, went to bed, and slept for 18 hours straight. I went to the doctor's the next day and he said that I wasn't dehydrated and it could have been different chemicals secreted from other organs while at altitude. So that's what I thought caused it.

But then I had another one four years later in grad-school. I woke up in the middle of the night with the same horrible back pain, went to the ER, and passed it in the room. They took a sample and it was made from citrate, so they advised me to modify my diet and such.

Then throughout the next couple of years, I passed small stones while pissing every six-twelve months, small black stones. I was on vacation last year and I passed one without any pain, so I didn't think anything of it. I should have had I known what was going to happen this past May.

I went to take a deuce right before going to bed and I got that side and back pain again. I knew right away it was a kidney stone so I told my wife to drive me to the ER. We got to the ER and the pain was like nothing I had experienced before with other stones---I was puking, sweating, shaking, and was really tired for some reason.

They gave me two of morphine---nothing.

They gave me another two of morphine---nothing again. I was literally cussing out the nurse cause it wasn't working.

They gave me four of dilaudid (hydromorphone---ten times stronger than morphine)---nothing again.

Two more of dilaudid---FINALLY! A bit of relief, but then they gave me two more just to be sure.

I was in the worst drug-induced stupor you could imagine---with nausea to boot. When I moved in my bed, I puked. When I stood up to try to piss and pass the stone, I puked. When I turned my head the wrong way, I puked. Eight hours later, I finally passed the stone (4 mm---the nurse said it was one of the biggest she had seen), they tested it, and it was calcium oxalate. Great. Another type of stone.

So now my diet is modified even further, I'm drinking ridiculous amounts of water each day, and watching my sodium intake. It sucks but I don't want to go through it again. Sorry for the long rant, just trying to share my experience.

I just drank a whole bottle of water while reading this thread... just in case. Really scary.

thanks for the story...

i was 43 and it was in june when i passed my first stone.. according to the dr. it was a small stone..

he gave me some vicodine (sp?) and some urinary relaxers in case it happens again..

he mentioned that some people will only get it once in their life, but others may pass a stone more than once..

now that i'm older and living in a dry area, i make sure i get enough liquids and salts...

Got one less than a year after moving to the tropics. Pain in the lower back. Within 15 min, I barely drove myself to the hospital. The pain disappeared walking across the parking lot. I told the nurse what happened and she said it was probably a stone and that it happens a lot to people new to the tropics. Trace of blood in my urine. Solution-drink more water. No reoccurence.

A couple of comments on here, "fetal position" and "writhing in agony," describe my experience, which I had at about age 44. My case was SEVERELY mishandled by a urologist, who kept going on lecture tours and vacations when he should have been treating me. He actually failed, initially, to diagnose kidney stones because they were not visible on a conventional X-ray, since they had slipped behind the pelvis. But a regular ultrasound would have found them. That fetal position? I was in that for five days. It kind of redefines one's perspective on life.

Passing them is quite an experience, but hardly the worst of it. It's better than HAVING them. I had three...I passed one myself. The earlier description of it as resembling a kernel of rice is fairly accurate, although I'd say mine was the size of two kernels.

I actually had to have surgery to get the other two out...I'd rather not even go into any further details. My advice would just be to get this dealt with properly as soon as you can (you don't have much choice in the matter).

And drink PLENTY of fluids, kids!

radiostar wrote:

A quote from the attending nurse in urgent care:

"This feeling is as close as you will get to that of having a baby."

Yeah, if the baby is wearing track spikes and a viking helmet with horns.

The easiest way to cleanse Kidney is to purchase 20 - 100 kg of watermelon (few huge melons), sit in a bath filled with water, eat all the watermelon throughout a day (as much as you can), while continually empting your urinary bladder into the water.

In this way, people have dissolved big stones, and then passed small kidney stones (sand) out of their body

http://doctorariel.blogspot.com/2007/08/watermelon-cleanse.html

http://www.falconblanco.com/health/cleansing/kidney.html#watermelon

I have passed three, all before I was 18! For me, passing them was not as painful compared to the initial pain they cause which made me go to the ER. I barely noticed passing them but initially I had to have strong pain medicine.