Passing Of A Kidney Stone

I was relieved to see the kidney stone land in the filter this morning. I was confident it was out of the painful areas, but it was nice to actually see the evil little thing out of my body. Since I have a microscope at work, I'm able to show you what the vexing little hunk of crystal looks like. It's 3 mm long with plenty of sharp points that surely did a nice job of sticking to my ureter wall. This one is bigger and more jagged than the first one I had 5-6 years ago.





The Wikipedia article on kidney stones is pretty good, if you want to read more about it. I guess I should cut back on the chocolate and nuts.

10 comments:

andy said...

that's just awful. glad it's passed. how long did it take?

Anonymous said...

I'm shuddering just thinking of that jagged edge.

KanyonKris said...

Let's see, the pain hit pretty hard around 10:30 Sunday night and it was pretty strong until late morning the next day when it subsided some and I cut back on the pain meds. So my best guess is it passed through the tightest spot in the plumbing in 12 hours. But the stone didn't come out until today so in that sense it took about 2.5 days.

KanyonKris said...

It's astounding how much pain it caused. The Wikipedia article sums it up pretty well: "can cause severe episodic pain", "can be associated with nausea and vomiting", "Often described as 'the worst pain [...] ever experienced'", "Fevers and chills".

Jolene had a kidney stone a few years ago and said it was on par, if not a bit more painful, than childbirth.

When the pain was the worst, I didn't want to die, but I did wish I would pass out to be free from it. I wanted pain meds BAD! I would have done Anything to reduce the pain even a little. That's why I stayed frozen in one position for 10-15 minutes until I was shaking, because it hurt a little worse if I moved.

OK, I think you get the idea.

Anonymous said...

so what you're saying is you'd rather get a swift kick to the region as soon as you wake up and every hour on the hour for two weeks than have that thing ripping its way through your plumbing.

I've never had a stone, and I hope I never get one.

Anonymous said...

woah. i mean WOAH.

Unknown said...

KK - I only check into your blog every so often. Loved the light solution a few posts ago, but hated the kidney stone post. I can't get the image of that jagged little nasty out of my head.

Sheesh!

KanyonKris said...

Sorry, I seem to have a disability that prevents me from knowing what is or is not socially acceptable to post. :-)

MOCougFan said...

I passed a stone 13 years ago. Hurt like nothing I have ever felt before. I got the chills just looking at that picture. Took me 3 months....still couldn't pass it. Had to have the lithotripsy to remove it. Those demons suck.

ER Dad said...

OUCH! Thos little buggers definitely contribute to a good portion of my business in the ER. I don't wish it on anyone.