Kidney Stone Saga

[Clematis]

Next couple of WEEKS @OldBroad ? He's leaving stent in for weeks? Damn, girl. I'm sorry. Mine was only in for 24 hours and I didn't have the cystitis feeling. A young woman I ran into (same urologist) had hers in for 3 days and said she too had the urgency feeling from it. He made her come in to have it removed and since her lithotripsy was on a Friday, she had a 3 day wait. No one knows why he instructed me to pull it out myself, but I saw research that patients report less discomfort if they can do it themselves vs having doc or nurse do it. I didn't have any pain removing it but I was thoroughly freaked out b/c I had no clue how long the thing was. (Maybe that was a good thing?) I said OMG OMG OM elfin G over and over and over again.

A nephrologist recommended a small coffee filter in the 4" diameter sieve if I wanted to catch "sand" but meh I only bothered with what was big enough to be caught in a sieve since I'd had several tested by that point.

University of Chicago urology website is a wealth of info -- the best source of info I've found, much to the annoyance of my Cleveland Clinic docs. Haha. Frederick Coe MD who wrote much of the stuff is awesome. There are endless pages as everything in blue (and theres something in blue in every paragraph) links to yet another topic and data.

 

[OldBroad]

I've been using a disposable pee filter the past couple of days and most of what I've caught is smaller than the grains of sand you see on a fine sand beach. The stent is driving me nuts. Every time I stand up, I feel like I have to pee. I'm calling up the urologist first thing tomorrow and begging to have the stent removed immediately. As it is, I'm taking Flomax, pyridium and Ditropan and still feeling urgency all the time. Urg!

 

[OldBroad]

Well, I made a squeaky wheel of myself and got the stent removed this morning. I had to get an x-ray first. The urologist couldn't see any big chunks left, so he agreed to take out the stent. He warned me that it was still possible for a chunk of the stone to get caught in my ureter, but that I was likely to be OK. I felt worse right afterwards. It felt like the removal process triggered even worse spasms in my bladder and/or ureter. Now that I've taken all the meds I can get my hands on (ditropan, pyridium, and percocet), things are settling down.

I also had to insist that he send off the tiny stone fragments I collected for analysis. He really seemed to think it was unnecessary. As he explained, the stones showed up clearly on the x-rays and only calcium stones are that easy to see. On the whole, he seemed to think that since was my first episode of kidney stones, I should be operating under the assumption that all I needed to do was drink more water and I'd be in the clear in the future. I was not satisfied with that approach and he didn't object to testing.

I am hoping that this is the last I have to think about kidney stones.

 

[DianaCox]

I am reminded of when I was a graduate student in the biological chemistry department at UCLA, and one of our jobs was helping to TA and grade the medical and dental students' biochem courses. The ignorance was astonishing, considering they had to take chem and biochem as undergrads to even get into medical/dental school.

Of COURSE calcium-containing stones are the most common - but calcium is an ion, which requires an anion to bind to it to cause it to precipitate. What that anion is, MATTERS in how you treat your predisposition to form stones!

http://kidneystones.uchicago.edu/types-of-stones/

"The names of kidney stones are the names of the crystals which make up the hard part of the stones: CAOX, Calcium Oxalate; CAP, Calcium phosphate; UA, Uric Acid; Cystine; Struvite. The pie wedges show their relative abundances to each other in our large population of stone forming patients. Calcium oxalate stones are the most common by a wide margin, and that has been true in every accounting of stone types I have ever seen.

The whole science of stone prevention focuses upon stone crystals. Each type of crystal creates its own unique illness and has specific details of treatment."
​

You need to know WHICH type of calcium stone it is

• Calcium oxalate? Avoid oxalates - speaking of which, how much vitamin C do you take? It is metabolized to oxalate.
• Calcium phosphate? I don't know - maybe just more fluid?

http://kidneystones.uchicago.edu/how-to-be-a-successful-kidney-stone-patient/

 

[OldBroad]

Vitamin C: I take 500 mg split into two doses. I bite a chewable in half and take half with my iron and half with my second calcium dose of the day.

Do uric acid stones also have calcium? I am confused.

 

[DianaCox]

No, uric acid crystals don't have calcium.