Had a weird experience after going to sleep last night. I woke up in the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. It was in my back, in the region of my right kidney, but it felt like a severe muscle cramp or strain. It was a dull pain, not sharp (as I’d expect a kidney stone to feel like). I couldn’t lie down, and could barely tolerate sitting. We thought about going to the emergency room, but after putting on a heat bandage, taking a couple ibuprofen, and then a vicodin, and lying up in bed with several pillows behind me, I eventually managed to get back to sleep.
Woke up this morning, and it was a little sore, but nothing like it had been when I went to sleep. Now I can barely tell it happened, but I’m feeling slightly nauseated (haven’t had anything to eat or drink except water and a couple cups of coffee, though that’s normal for me). Still don’t know what it was, or if it will recur, but if it does, I’ll definitely have to go to the doctor.
[Thursday-morning update]
Just got off the phone with a friend who’s an ER doc with decades of experience. He said that unless it persists for more than a couple days, to not sweat it, other than maybe peeing in a bottle to see if I can get a sample for testing. “Don’t waste money on urologists or scans.”
[Bumped]
Go see a doctor anyway. Don’t wait for it to happen again. What if it comes back this weekend when your regular doctor is closed? Going to the ER or a doc in the box isn’t fun and the quality of care is likely less than you will get from your regular doctor.
I had to take someone to a doc in the box for stitches the other weekend and it was a big deal for the staff. Can’t imagine them handling something complicated.
I don’t have a regular doctor.
ERs aren’t any fun either. Had a kidney stone which provided horizon expanding levels of pain and had to wait 3 hours for the south of the border folks with head colds to be taken care of before getting a pain shot.
This has been happening to a friend of mine and she hasn’t gotten a good diagnosis for it. If you hear anything, I’d appreciate if you’d let me know, and I’ll do likewise.
Sounds like the description of symptoms for my kidney-stone. If I hadn’t been peeing red I probably would have just been stoic about it and skipped the ER.
Possible kidney stone.
Yes, that’s what we were thinking. I’ve never had one before. If it is, now I’m feeling like a ticking bomb.
I concur with the others above. Sounds exactly like when I had my first kidney stone earlier this year. If you go to the doc, don’t let them prescribe you some half-assed pain killer. Morphine is your friend.
I had a kidney stone back in about ’99, thankfully have never had another. What you describe is so very similar to my own experience, and it sounds like you passed the stone. Find a good GP in your area and get their feedback.
Sounds like a gall stone actually. I’d bite the bullet and go into an emergency room or at least to an urgent care.
Probably a kidney stone, but don’t let them prematurely focus too much on that vs. other diagnoses. A patient should always be prepared to ask a doctor “what’s the worst thing this could be, and have you ruled that out?” In this case, although I’m not a medical doctor, I’d be worried about abdominal aortic aneurysm and possibly ischemic bowel (“intestine attack”). Both of these can be fatal.
Well, since the episode seems to be over, it’s not clear that there’s even anything to diagnose at this point.
Stones can move, and not be expelled even if the pain fades. Could still be in there and blocking a tubule. Google it. Not safe to leave it uninvestigated.
Please Rand, whatever any of us said around here, we luv ya, man . . . please please please get this checked out . . .
My sister-in-law the surgeon thinks it is probably gall stones but could be kidney stones, and in any case, she says you should go to a doctor and get an ultrasound to find out what it is. She discussed a scenario where a gallstone blocks a tube, as Tom Bri mentions above, in which you could have to go the ER to save your life, but she says you would probably know it due to other symptoms (jaundice, or brown urine, among others). All of the above was dragged out of her – she really just wanted to say “Go to a doctor.”
Well, I really haven’t had any other symptoms (no obvious blood or discoloration in urine, no nausea). But I’m shopping around for urologist and ultrasound quotes.
You’ll only need the ultrasound if its not calcium based. Calcium stones show up quite nicely on the traditional KUB (flat) X-Ray.
Uric acid stones are KUB transparent and require either KUB with an IV dye or ultrasound to be “seen”.
Now that statement is so foreign to me being from Canada. We just go see Dr and then you go schedule a scan few days later.. Nothing out of pocket.. Such a different system!
Hope things settle quickly!
Jb
See a doctor. My wife went through the same thing and it is not something to let slide.
Sounds like a kidney stone. Been there done that myself many times. Have had both kinds, uric acid based and calcium monoxolate. Your urine doesn’t necessarily redden when passing, although usually it gets darker in color. There is a quickie urine test they can do in the ER to determine the likely hood of a stone. I’d see a doctor anyway even if you are out of pain. You may have more than 1. And if you do you won’t notice it until it starts to pass and then its too late for prevention. Lithotripsy is the procedure to prevent painful stone passage. It’s an outpatient procedure but they usually administer a general so you can’t drive afterward.
If it’s calcium monoxolate, you’ll have to give up the deadly duo of caffine (coffee in my case) and calcium (read dairy, i.e. creamer). I started ordering lattes with almond milk, and that works, except when they accidentally give you real milk by mistake. Which of course I can’t tell by taste and then a few hours later disaster. So I’ve given them up altogether!
This is kind of ironic, because I never drank coffee in my life until a couple of years ago. I don’t like it much, it has no discernible effect on me, and I do so only because I’d seen a lot of studies about its health benefits. But I drink it black.
And in what I think is a similar irony, if it is a gall bladder problem, my non-medical understanding is that you’ll want to avoid high fat foods (but probably only until the problem is resolved.)
Rand,
Then you’re probably at lower risk. But it wouldn’t hurt to chase the coffee with plenty of water. If you trust your tap water fine or bottled/filtered water otherwise.
If you have medical insurance that covers the cost, I’d *still* recommend at least an X-ray to make sure you don’t have any residual stones. The type of X-ray needed is about the cheapest there is and can save you a lot of grief and aggravation. Stones can float around in your kidneys quite undetectable until they start to pass. Wouldn’t it be better to know and be able to be proactive about treatment rather than not and get hit with an attack at a most inopportune time? Esp. for someone like you who travels a lot.
Anyway my two cents worth.
David
It’s a wake up call. You’d never assume a problem had gone away on a launch vehicle just because the monitor stopped blinking, would you?
Please do care for yourself Rand. Be persistent. You can’t rely on all medical services. I’d really be pissed if ya died.
As a husband of an ER Nurse, don’t deal with this via the ER unless you have too. Specifically, you should have gone the night you first felt this. Now that you have not, and feel a bit better, do what you say you are doing and go see a urologist on your own time. If they are kidney stones, the nurses will have no doubt you are in pain, but ER nurses know the most critical ill patients are those with chest pain or problems breathing. You just need to be sent to a floor to be given pain medicine, and you could do that best by seeing a doctor first and having them admit you.
One of my wife’s favorite punch line jokes: Nurse: “What brings you to the ER?” Patient: “This sharp pain in my abdomen.”. Nurse: “How long have you noticed this pain?”. Patient: “for about a week.”. Nurse: “You been sufferring for a week, and now you think this is an emergency?”. You won’t hear laughter when the nurse relays this to the other nurses, but you just got demoted on the list of patients needing urgent care. After all, you just convinced them the pain is not critical to you, and you can tolerate the pain.
Last April I had appendix-like symptoms. Called my O-Care insurance company and found out which ER was in their network. There are three ERs within a mile of my house but none were in the network so I asked a neighbor to drive me to an in-network ER five miles away. Waited no more than twenty minutes to be seen by a doc who put me in a CT scanner and then told me that my appendix needed to come out. Six hours later I was appendix free and they sent me home. I was a bit worried because I didn’t know how much I’d have to pay with my HSA/Silver plan. The various providers billed $40K and I had to fork out less than $1000. Not bad.
Line up your in-network ER before you need it, just in case. I’m guessing that my out-of-pocket would have been double or more if I’d gone to an ER/hospital out of my insurance company’s network.
Concur with others here, also based on personal experience going back a couple decades, that it was most likely a kidney stone that passed. Other than the excruciating pain, kidney stones are often asymptomatic and leave no traces detectable by ex post facto diagnostic procedures. I had several recurrences after my initial episode before one of the evil little suckers could be detected in situ. Also agree the only pain killers that work more than marginally are opiates. They can allow you to fall asleep and awake after the stone has passed. Easiest way I found to reduce/eliminate recurrence was to stay well hydrated. I too live in SoCal and the past month has been especially hot and nasty. Perfect kidney stone weather. Drink lots of water. For what it’s worth, I’ve had no recurrences since going on a very low-carb diet three years ago. YMMV. Good luck and don’t stay thirsty my friend.
It does sound like a kidney stone. The (intense) pain is diffuse, as it’s from the blockage back-pressure, mostly not the stone itself. And opiates are dilators; likely the vicodin is what let it move on. It may or may not have passed entirely yet, mind – very small stones (sand-grains) can pass mostly unnoticed, larger ones (fish-tank gravel grains) not so much.
I had a bad stone (leg-buckling pain) twenty years ago, then a few smaller ones in following months, then nothing since. I didn’t give up coffee or milk, or anything – except drinking the local tap-water. Does your water leave chalk-spots when it dries? Then it too has loads of dissolved calcium in it. Try subbing reverse-osmosis flitered water for ALL internal use, and I do mean all, drinking and cooking and ice cubes. $0.25 a gallon at the supermarket vending machines or a “water store”, get a few big plastic jugs and keep a stock.
YMMV, but it worked for me.
I have a filtered line for drinking and ice water.
Filtered how? Particulate filter plus activated charcoal are far more common, but won’t remove any calcium. You need full reverse osmosis filtering for that.
Yes, just dual canister, not RO. But then, I eat a lot of cheese, too.
Switching to water without a lot of dissolved calcium is a LOT easier than giving up things you actually like. If filling jugs with RO water is too onerous – I just do it as part of my grocery shopping routine – you can get an RO filter and spigot for your house for a hundred or so, plus periodic cartridge replacement.
And doing nothing is a bad idea. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot on medical testing; your doctor friend is correct – but change nothing and you will quite likely get more stones. And the next one, or the one after, could just be that smidgen too large for another vicoden to open a passage for. At which point you’re very soon in an EW with your legs buckling with the pain.
Free advice – do NOT make excuses to do nothing.