Kidney Stone or Meatloaf Chunk?

I had my first experience with Kidney Stones yesterday and let me tell you, it is NOT one that I would ever like to have again! Long story short - I woke up at 5am on Thursday morning in extreme pain and went into the ER around 6am and got 3 doses of morphine and when that wasn't enough they gave me some dilaudid and that finally eased the pain. They did a CT scan to determine that I had a kidney stone and told me it'd pass in a few days and sent me home with some pain killers and "strainers" and told me to catch the stone when it passed and bring it into the doctor for analysis. Amazingly I was blessed to pass the stone the same day!

Here's the full story:

Wednesday night just before I went to bed I started having a little bit of abdominal pain but i didn't think much of it. At about 5am on Thursday morning I woke up in tons of pain and felt certain that I had a urinary tract infection. I've had a few of them and knew the symptoms. I decided to go back to sleep and call the Dr's office when they opened that morning. By 5:15 the pain was so intense that I knew I couldn't wait until 8 when the Dr's office opened and then I remembered that we had a full unused prescription of amoxicillin that had been prescribed for Peter a few months ago for strep or a sinus infection or something. I went down and took 800mg of ibuprofen and one of the amoxicillin but the pain was already so bad that I almost passed out. I got back upstairs quick so I didn't pass out alone in the kitchen where Peter wouldn't have been able to hear me. I laid on the floor in our room panting for breath and moaning in a cold sweat and woke up Peter. He helped me to the bathroom and back to bed. I almost threw up a few times from the pain that had now settled onto the right side really low on my back and side. The pain got really really intense and I couldn't stay in control anymore. All 3 natural childbirths combine couldn't hold a candle to that pain. Peter gave me a blessing and I just prayed for relief.

We decided that we'd better go into the ER since we were pretty sure the appendix was on the right side and I was starting to get delirious from the pain and I was in a crazy cold sweat and more pain than I've ever experienced in my life! We were worried that my appendix could have ruptured. We called my brother to come and stay with the kids and then just left even before he got there, even though Logan was awake and screaming in his crib when we left. I was getting worse every minute and Peter was super worried to see me in so much pain. He's seen me deal with extreme pain when my babies were born, and was always amazed at how in control and calm I was during those times, so seeing me so out of control and sobbing really worried him.

I couldn't walk or even hold my head up on my own I was so weak, so Peter carried me to the car. I kept begging Heavenly Father for a little relief from the pain, it was just too much. On the drive there I felt my insides shifting in me as we made every turn and went over every bump. It was so weird to be able to feel my organs, and it felt like they were sloshing around inside of me. About this time my forearms and calves started to really tingle and get super heavy and I felt a lot of pressure and tingling in my chest between my collar bone. As Peter wheeled me into the ER we noticed that my hands were cramped up and turned inward and I was having a hard time breathing. It felt like my tongue was huge and I just couldn't get enough air. It was pretty scary. We found out later that all of the cramping was caused by my fast and shallow breathing and that breathing was part of my body's natural reaction to the pain.

After we got registered and were in the waiting room filling out forms the pain started to subside quite a bit and I got SUPER tired and weak. From then on out the pain came in waves instead of constant which was a HUGE blessing. I thought I would literally die if I had to endure that pain without any relief for much longer. They collapsed two veins trying to get a blood sample and I threw up from the pain, but they finally got a good vein and put in an IV. They gave me some anti nausea medicine and put me on oxygen since I was having a hard time breathing and felt like I'd pass out any minute. They also put some morphine into the IV and that helped a little bit but I was still in a lot of pain. So they gave me some more morphine. I was okay until another wave of pain hit and I was in tears and cold sweat again so they gave me a third dose of morphine. That helped for about an hour while they ran blood tests and checked my urine for signs of infection. They weren't sure if I had appendicitis or kidney stones or possibly cysts on my ovaries or a UTI (urinary tract infection) combined with one of those. About an hour or so after the 3rd dose of morphine I had another pretty bad wave of pain and almost threw up again and was in a cold sweat again from the pain. They gave me some more anti-nausea medicine and something called dilaudid which is apparently more powerful than morphine and it worked. I finally felt better, exhausted and a little foggy, but no more pain.

I stayed on oxygen the whole time I was there even though my oxygen levels only dropped a few times while we were there but they were really low when they did dip down. Mostly the oxygen just made me feel better and I didn't have such a hard time breathing and didn't feel AS lightheaded when I had it. My blood pressure was a little low but it often is and my pulse would drop so low that it'd send off an alarm every 5 or 10 minutes (about 40 to 43 beats per minute) then is would go up a bit to about 50 and stay there. My resting heart rate normally is about 60 last time I checked, I've gotten into better shape since then though so it may have dropped a bit but not that much. They were a little worried about my heart rate being so low so they did an EKG and said it looked fine but was just slow and they didn't know why. The blood tests didn't give them any concrete answers so they did a CT scan and found that it was indeed a kidney stone, just one that was about 3 mm, and no urinary tract infection or anything else. So kidney stones start in your kidneys (obviously) and then travel down the ureter (a tiny tube - this is the painful part) and then into the bladder and then you "pass" them with your urine. The CT scan showed that the stone had already passed through most of the ureter and was fairly close to the bladder which is when the pain usually ends. The Doctor told me that it'd likely be a few days still until it got there. Most kidney stones take 4-5 days on average to pass, so I was lucky that it shouldn't be that long.

They sent me home with 3 different prescriptions. One to help me pee a lot (sorry TMI), one for nausea and one for pain. I was told to filter my pee and bottle the stone when it passed so they could analyse it and see if they can tell what it's made of so I can adjust my diet to get less calcium or whatever to try to prevent me getting another stone in the future. I guess they said that once you've had one you are much more likely to get them again. Yikes! The doctor in the ER told us that they THINK that kidney stones are caused by excess of "dark cola drinks" or chocolate or too much calcium or dairy in your diet. The funny thing is that I don't drink soda except of very rare occasions (maybe once a month or less) and in the past 6 months I have consumed less chocolate than ever in my entire life! I've practically cut chocolate out of my diet completely as I've been trying so hard to loose weight. AND I don't really like dairy foods! I don't ever drink milk, though I will pour it on my cereal. I don't each a lot of cheese, in fact I prefer most things without cheese. I don't even eat much yogurt or cottage cheese even though I know those things are healthy, I just don't like them very much. So I'm pretty sure I don't have an EXCESS of any of those things in my diet, so I'm curious to find out what caused my stone!

We came home from the hospital around 11:30. Poor Peter was EXHAUSTED! He'd taken Tyler with a bunch of friends and a few other guys in the neighborhood to a midnight showing of Avatar the last air bender the night before and hadn't fallen asleep until about 2:30 or so and then I woke him up just after 5am. Poor guy! My brother had to go to work so my neighbor Mindy came over and stayed with the kids. We called a few other friends who came and took kids that afternoon while Peter tried to get some work done. He had several meetings and things on Tuesday and didn't get much work done and Wednesday he picked one of his young men from California up from the airport and spent the morning with him and then brought him into the MTC and on the way home got some work done on his car and then had to leave to drive up to check out a campsite where they are going to have father's and sons. So he got no work done on Wednesday and then I took him away for half of the day on Thursday so he absolutely had to get some work done when we got home. Luckily I have FABULOUS friends and neighbors who took care of my kids, cleaned up my house and even brought lunch (dinner was already taken care of from my dinner swap group). So I came home and crashed hard. I just slept and woke up in more extreme pain around 12:30 when I took more painkillers and then slept again until around 5:30, and woke up to see some of the kids who'd come home. Then slept again until about 8pm when Tyler brought me up some meatloaf and mashed potatoes and a big glass of water. I ate and then I got up to use the bathroom and lo and behold - A STONE! I didn't believe it at first. I thought that a little bit of my meatloaf had fallen onto my shirt and fallen into the strainer as I used the bathroom (I know gross, but that's what I thought!). But sure enough I put it into the little container they sent home and it *plinked* when it hit the bottom like something hard would do, not like a soft piece of meatloaf would have done a soft *thud*. I was due for more pain medication right about then but didn't take any and I felt fine. No pain, just fuzziness and a little woozy and tingly and itchy all over as the pain medication wore off. We put the kids to bed just after 9pm and Peter and I both went right to bed as well. I slept until this morning at 8:30 and still felt fine so I was finally convinced that I really had passed the stone and it wasn't just meatloaf after all!!

I have read that the process of passing a kidney stone has been compared to that of a child passing through the birth canal. I'd like to share with you that it is not like this at all... it is worse... SO much worse!! So very much worse. And you don't even get the reward of a darling little baby to hold in your arms when it's all over. Instead you have this tiny hard rock that looks like a deformed chunk of meatloaf that will likely laugh in your face at the pain that it caused you! I don't wish this on anyone! Even though if my kidney stone had a name it would be Speedy Gonzales since it only took 15 hours to pass and not the average 96 to 120 hours, I hope that I NEVER have to experience that again. And if you have had the misfortune of meeting your own evil little rock hard meatloaf chunk passing through your body in places it never should be allowed to venture... I am sorry, so very very sorry!