Kidney stones

[brightnorm]

I just got through reading the thread about those monster water moccasins that aggressively attack you, and now this!

They say that as men get older they need nearly as much extra calcium (from food or supplements) as women. Now I wonder if osteoporosis might be the lesser of two evils.

Brightnorm

 

[ZENGHOST]

[ QUOTE ]
MichiganMan said:
[ QUOTE ]
ZENGHOST said:
Man, I have always been paranoid about kidney stones since my dad had it and a couple of my friends have had it. I'm only 28 right now and two of my friends have had it a couple of years ago. Reading this thread has made me even more paranoid since it seems to be rather abundant. The fact that I started taking calcium pills a couple of days ago increases my paranoia. My father was just diagnosed with osteoperosis so my mom's got me on calcium pills. So now I'm thinking if I take the pills I can get kidney stones, but if I don't take the pills I can get osteoperosis. Great. I also am in the habit of skipping

[/ QUOTE ]

They say that men generally don't need calcium supplementation and hence, due to some uncertainty about the origin of kidney stones, shouldn't take any. However your father getting it may indicate a genetic predisposition (way out of my area here) If so then I would gladly risk stones before I risked osteoporosis.

[/ QUOTE ]
Dude, after Dan's post I'm with brightnorm--I think I'll risk the osteoperosis for fear of the kidney stones.

 

[JohnK]

The cystoscope will make you bleed like a stuck hog (if you are already not bleeding.). My episode ended about two months ago. It took five WEEKS from beginning to end.

I thought I had experienced severe pain before, but this really raised the bar. I firmly believe that pain of that intensity for an extended time will kill you.

Thank God for narcotics.

 

[Brotherscrim]

[ QUOTE ]
CNC Dan said:
Oh and one more thing. They may want to leave a tube up there to keep the urter from swelling shut from the iratation. They remove the tube by pulling on the string that is atached to it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, that was one of the "complications" I hinted at on my previous post. Initially, the urologist thought that they could laser the stone. In order to do that, they have to use that tube. Well, because the laser/camera they use has a little squirtgun (hope I don't lose you with these technical terms) to ease its travel to the kindney, the stream of water loosened the stone and it floated back up the kidney and out of range.

So now, they had to use the litho (they basically snap your back a few thousand times with a sonic rubberband, and the resonance will break up the stone), but they left that tube where it was because it supposed to make passing the stone easier.

A month later, they removed it at his office. Well, they tried to remove it. There was a snag; one end got stiff and it stuck. So what did this man do to my lady? He sent her home and said they would schedule a time to remove it at the hospital tomorrow. They sent her home with a plastice tube hanging 10 inches or so out of her.

In case you don't see why this is terrible, allow me to explain. Potty training more or less teaches your body to close the "valves" automatically when you're not actively trying to go to the bathroom. A big friggen plastic tube preventing the aforementioned "valves" from closing does 2 things:

1) Hurts like hell
2) You **** yourself, pretty much all the time.

With no warning from the doctor, he sent her home to discover both of those things on her own. I had to buy her Depends that night. She was so upset.

The next time I saw the doctor, I almost clocked him. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

I'm told that the above scenario is extremely rare - those tubes are supposed to be able to stay in for a lot longer than 30 days. I guess it was "luck"

 

[CNC Dan]

[ QUOTE ]
KC2IXE said:
Dan,
Your description scares me. Mine is also stuck in the tube. The big problem is that it's too low for lithotripsy (sp?) and at this point, a bit too high for them to go in with the cath! They want to see if it moves a bit. Hurts tonight. One pill worth

Back to work

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't mean to put you off, just wanted you to be prepaired.

In addition to the stone (5mm) I had a large (22mm) stone in my bladder. They used a 'jackhammer' to break it up. It was a small stone that continued to grow in my bladder.

Oh, and avoiding calcium may make things worse.

 

[Pi_is_blue]

One of our goats had a kidney stone problem. Every few months he would be really uncorfortable and just lay on the ground and push to try to get it out. We finally got an X-ray, and he had several dozen stones! He is a wether (had a little operation when he was young), and they get stones pretty easily. He had an operation to remove the stones. We put him on a diet of hay and water only, and we give him amonium chloride salt that acidifies his urine to dissolve any stones that may form.

 

[KC2IXE]

Well the big day is Monday - Oh joy /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif The stone is down enough to get to it. Had the Pre admitting tests yesterday, meeting with the Surgeon today, my regular MD Friday, and then

MONDAY

 

[hyeTotum]

73's & Good Luck!

 

[d'mo]

Best of luck and prayers! Went through it myself last year. Not the most pleasant of experiences, but it beats having the stones!

 

[tech]

Been there, done that.
My first episode was the morning my wife and I were to go to her grandmothers funeral.
We had binged on Krispy Kreme doughnuts the night before, so I thought the pain was from that...but 10 tums wouldn't do it.
I had urine the color of iced-tea before...so I had stopped drinking that because I thought I was drinking too much tea!
Anyway, once I started to cry my wife drove me to the hospital.
Pretty soon after getting in the car I started screaming like a stuck pic/ little baby...whatever. Most pain I've ever been in, and I hope to never repeat it again...though I had two smaller bouts two months later.
My scans were so cloudy they couldn't find the stone.
Strained urine for 3-4 months, and never caught the little bugger.

*sigh* Good times...

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

T.

 

[brightnorm]

The closest I've come to that sort of pain is when I had a herniated disc "attack". It laid me out fetally on the floor. I was two feet from the phone and it took me two hours to reach it. I heard someone screaming and it was me.

Good luck Charlie; get rid of the d@mned thing!

Brightnorm

 

[Unicorn]

This thread is painful to just read about. I can't even imagine what you must be going through. I keep cringing. I used to work with a guy who got these every few years. Usually he just did ultrasound and took some nice pain meds. Fortunately, he didn't give such graphic descriptions.

 

[shankus]

Ooh, I thought I was going to get to forget about mine.

I was about 12-13. About 3 AM, I woke up with back pain. As it worsened, my folks took me to the ER. By the time we got there, it was excruciating. The doctor himself told me the pain is comparable to childbirth. I have also heard this from others.

They gave me some strong pain killer, that didn't really work. I think it nauseated me. Either that, or like others said, I vomited from the pain. Either way, the result was the same. Terrible pain, and now, vomiting.

I was in the hospital for 3 days. I passed mine. It was about 3/32" square, and flat. Seriously, it looked like a manufactured item!
Since the technology has progressed, I now know what it really was. It was a semi-conductor chip. Most probably a tracking device implanted in me by the Grays. Well, I've not been abducted by aliens, so that proves my theory. They can't find me.

I think I got too many minerals in my water, as we drank from a well. The water was brownish when you run a bathtub full most of the time. What I mean is, you couldn't see the color in a glass of water, but you could in large quantities.


Now I drink a lot of water, but I don't drink the extremely hard water that we have here. And I don't drink store-bought water, either. I drink distilled water. I distill my own water, with a distiller I bought on ebay.
It is cheaper than buying water, and it is so clear and good. It freezes clear. The local water freezes white, and leaves alkalai in the ice trays. It leaves alkalai everywhere.

We use swamp coolers (evaporative coolers) here, and I changed my girlfriend's pads the other day (No, the cooler pads!). One of them was covered about 1/3 by alkalai about 1" thick! It looked like a giant frosted mini-wheat! That stuff has to collect somewhere in my body if I drink that water, so I don't.

My only concern is, do I get enough minerals from my diet, or do I need minerals that most people get in their water as well? Does anyone know the answer to this?

Also, for people that don't like drinking a lot of water, try a squeeze of lemon, lime or both in it.
Now, in my experience, I urinate more with lemon in the water. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. It seems that with the water, and the flushing effect, it would be a good combination.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Shankus, no you probably don't get enough minerals from your diet..especially if you are drinking distilled water.
Your body sees something wrong with this kind of water, and it's right, there are no minerals in it, so the body adds them to the pure water on it's way through - and you end up eliminating whatever minerals were in your body to begin with..
drinking distilled not a good idea, unless it's the only cure to your problem of course.. I recommend a daily muliple vitamin with chelated minerals like "Solgar Formula V vm-75" ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif
..'dr' TtL /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[hyeTotum]

YooHoo "dr"...

I've tried just about every vitamin and vitamin/mineral en vogue since the fifties and the VM-75 from Solgar certainly ranks with the best! A megavitamin that you can actually notice is working! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/buttrock.gif

Expensive -- but not too bad if you can pick up the 180 tab 'economy' size. Probably less wasted/better absorbed than the cheapies... (IIRC there is even a 360 tab bottle available.)

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

hi hye,
yup I get the #180 bottle.. I used to take just a half of a pill per day, because they do supply somewhat high doses, till I nearly choked to death on a jagged little half..now I take the whole pill at once, just to make sure I can continue to breathe.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[Joe Talmadge]

I tend to agree that drinking distiled water is probably a bad idea. Hell, for all we know it will cause more stones -- what with all those minerals leaching out of your bones and the rest of your system. It's not always intuitively obvious that a home remedy will help with these things.

If you have a uric acid based stone, one standard treatment is allopurinol, a pill you take daily that lowers your uric acid. It's a very good idea to talk to your urologist about what you should do to avoid more stones, since statistically once you've had a stone, you're at very high risk of developing another. Actually, I'd rephrase that: there's no excuse for not talking to your urologist -- you know the pain, you know you're at great risk for another one, you shouldn't be dabbling with home remedies!

Joe

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Joe, of course absolutely see the doc, I assumed the dr. had been consulted, and has told us about diet; there are chemicals in certain foods (beer) that help the stones to form in the first place.. I don't have a list here at the moment..

 

[Joe Talmadge]

If it's a uric-acid stone, then there's a low-purine diet you want to follow. For me, I was already eating a fairly low-purine diet -- a lot of the high-purine "avoid" foods are organs (liver, etc.) and shellfish, which I don't eat anyway. Broths of all kinds are on the avoid list. I think if you do a google search on "low purine diet", you'll find it all over the web; it's used for gout sufferers as well. The daily allopurinol pill is also used for gout, since like uric-acid stones, the cause is the same -- too much uric acid!

Joe

 

[KC2IXE]

Well, they broke up the stone today! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

But now it HURTS to go to the bathroom - feels like your passing glass - some blood and the like. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/faint.gif