Fun with cat scans
 

I woke up Monday morning in a lot of pain. The doctors opinion was that going by a specimin and the location of the pain it was possibly a kidney stone, similar to what I had about ten years ago.

Today I went in for the CT scan, which only took about 5 minutes. However, the doctor ordered a second scan which required the drinking of two Barium 'smoothies' (berry flavored) over the next two hours and a return appointment for an iodine IV drip and a second scan.

I went home, drank the two 1/2 liter 'smoothies', and discovered the interesting side effect of all of that stuff hitting my digestive system.

When I showed up for my second appointment, I was told that after discussing it with the doctor, the second procedure was really not necessary for checking for kidney stones and was canceled.http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/omg2.gif

On the bright side, the pain has lessened and I may not need to take the Endocet she prescribed to get to sleep like I did last night. If I don't take the Endocet, I can go back to work tomorrow. I don't exactly handle heavy machinery, but programming is not something I like to do while impaired. It might be useful for meetings, thoughhttp://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/biggrin.gif.

I paid $10 for a CD with reading software and a copy of my CT scan. Unfortunely, not being a radiologist, I can barely recognize my spine and one other essential piece of my anatomy, much less see any stones.

so does this mean you have kidney stones, or not?

My guess is he's so enchanted with the new imaging software he isn't noticing. :compute:

Yeah, seems that way. :)

You know me so wellhttp://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/wink.gif. Actually, I probably won't know until tomorrow. Considering the lessening of the pain, either it passed already or it was some sort of infection and not a stone. Since there was blood and white cells, it was either stones or an infection.

If I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, it's a stone and it's still there.

I've gone a few rounds with kidney stones. My God. I felt I was going to die, and I feared I would not.

I did eventually live through the agony, and a couple of times I found the stone as it passed. It looked like a little broken crumb of a seashell, half the size of a kernel of popcorn. A jagged, malicious, bloodthirsty, evil seashell, but still. There was *no* way to comfort myself. No position, no hot bath, no rubbing, no cursing--nada. Witness the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals.

If I'm ever in that predicament again, and it's certainly possible, bring on the drugs. I'll drink whatever they recommend, til I burst, until I spend all my time over the toilet. Fine. But just keep the meds coming, for pity's sake. I wouldn't wish them on a snake.

Does anyone know what causes them?

It's a combination of your body chemistry and what you eat, and sometimes whether you have sufficient water intake. Some people seem to have them forming endlessly. If you are fat you will be more likely to have them, but not so much bacause you are fat as the stuff you have eaten combined with other lifestyle choices you have made that got you fat can also get you kidney stones.

BigV is right, it is a pain like no other this side of Iraqi tortures. It feels like a knife stuck in your back, the pain does not subside no matter what you do. Unfortunately, you just have to wait for the particle to make it all the way down :mg:

I thought that they could use ultrasonic resonance or some such to break apart the stones sometimes?


I have heard that it is the male equivilant to childbirth (with no pain medicine...)

I have heard of that too, and I declined that therapy. It was described to me thus:

You sit in a hydrotherapy pool, with your back (and kidneys) against the side of the pool. They wheel the sonic cannon (I don't really remember the name of the machine, some kind of ultrasound generator) line it up against the wall opposite your kidneys and turn it on. The desired effect is to have the sound travel through the mostly uniform medium of water and then when it hits something different, like the kidney stone, it would rattle/vibrate/shake/pound it into dust.

Think about it. They are trying to crush a pebble six inches inside your body, in your freaking kidney, by applying a force from outside. How hard do you have to hit it, do you think? I was told that it's like getting pounded with a two by four. That prospect was very unappealing in my current condition. Maybe if the procedure called for hitting me on the head, there would have been a chance...No thanks.

Edit: I looked it up.

Extracorporeal Shockwave Lithotripsy

Thanks for that link BigV. I especially liked this comment.

The underlines are mine. Actually, the doctor was supposed to give me one but forgot. I may have missed my opportunity.

There's several ways to do the sound-shock method of shattering the little bugger, one of which is to make an incision and feed in something similar to the laproscopic wand used in gall bladder surgery. Just about anything is preferable to the pain, by the time you have been passing one for a few days. But it's rather like an opera singer shattering a glass with her voice, not so much like trying to break something inside you by hitting your outside with a hammer :worried:

Oh, and that business about how they can be "easily" passed by drinking a lot of water and waiting for nature to take its course is wishful thinking. These "stones" are not always rounded and they can get lodged sideways in the tubes. All the water in the world will not expand that tube to let the thing continue on its way.

Shame you missed out on the free tea strainer. Real ones are quite expensive.

Or, you could ask your lovely wife for a knee high and slip it over a wire hanger you bend a loop into.

Oh, and of course, once you figure out how, you have to post some slices from your CT scan.

While it might be fun to try to explain to people at work why I am taking women's pantyhose into the men's room, I think I can get a strainer.

The results came back. I have multiple stones. The smallest is 3mm, which is passable. The largest is 9mmhttp://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/eek.gif.

Since the pain has abated for a while, I'm going to try to go back to work tomorrow. Right now I can only sit comfortably for 15-20 minutes and then go lie down, so it should be interesting.

Heres part of the CT scan view.

Let us know where to send flowers :(