At 1:30am Sunday, i was jolted out of my sleep with a pain in my side. i got downstairs, half awake, figuring i needed to pee, and the pain got even stronger. My DH took me to the hospital 5 blocks away. In the ER the pain was so excruciating that i went to stand up, and passed out on the floor. Next thing i remember i was upstairs in my hospital room on lots of pain meds. i was there until Wed morning.
Seems as though all my years of coke and diet coke and all the crap i had been putting into my body has finally taken it's toll. Kidney stones. i used to think, " how bad can they be "? Let me tell you, they are NO JOKE if you get one. The urologist came to tell me it's my body's way of telling me it has had enough of the binging. Had enough of the abuse. He said i was lucky it was kidney stones. It could have been diabetes or a heart attack.
That incident was enough for me. The one who always thought it would be fine. That nothing would really ever happen to me because of my bad eating habits. Scared the s**t out of me, is what it did. Could have been a heart attack. i keep remembering hearing him say that. No more sodas. Ever. No more chocolate. Ever. Something about them both having something in them that oxidizes and helps make kidney stones.
So here i am, back on track more than ever. i will complete this and i will be healthy, because it may mean my health or my life if i don't. It sucks that this is what it took for me to finally get serious...but i guess i needed just such a reality check to snap me into line. Expect to see me here ALOT. Getting healthy. Being responsible for the only body i will ever have. Doing what i came here to do.
Cinderellaphant
Oh I feel so bad for you. I have never had them but the hubby did. Thought the man was going to die it was so painful. We never think about what we are doing to our body's as we poor junk into it do we. You are right, could have been far worse. Glad you will be ok. At least they gave you some advice. They didn't tell us anything. He doesn't drink a lot of pop or eat a lot of chocolate. We have no idea what cause it. When he passed the stone it was the size of a grain of sand. I said good heavens I had two baby's natural and you made all that fuss over that lol. I was so relieved he was ok.
Thank you for the information. I am going to make him read this. Maybe he will eat better now and stop putting all the junk into his body.
Wow, that's terrible. I've never had one, but a friend gets them periodically, and they sound just terrible.
It's funny, I've never had a health scare of any real sort, but as I get older (and more aware of my own mortality!), health has becoming an increasingly important reason for me to get off the binge merry-go-round and stop inflicting the abuse on my body. I'm a bit of a cancer-phobe to start with, and the thought of diabetes (I'm a recovering sugar junkie) is pretty sobering. Glad you just got the "warning shot", and are still around to make the good changes.
Wow, so sorry to hear you had kidney stones. Been there, done that. I get them all the time. Well not all the time, but about 10 times.
You really need to look into getting a new urologist if he said that though. Honey, you dont weigh that much. He needed to give you better information than that. I have had these since i was a child. My dad has them. His dad had them. I dont want to burst your "eye opening" moment but it has nothing to do with binging. You can strain your urine and find out what the stone's make up is. More than likely they are made of calcium oxalate as 90% of kidney stones are made of. Binge eating doesnt cause kidney stones. Most of the time, it is just that your body doesnt respond properly with the balance of calcium, vitamin D, sodium, and phosphorus.
If you are anything like me, you will do ANYTHING to NEVER have one of these again. However, be aware, once you have one, your chances of having more is quite high. The best way to avoid them though is to MOST importantly cut salt and drink LOTS of water with lemon. The acid from the lemon helps break down any really small stones, so they end up like a sandy grit you can pass and never know you had them. Use filtered water when you drink water, especially if you are in any area that has "hard" water...hard water is full of minerals that can clog a predisposed kidney.
Secondly, you were right about the sodas...its the phosphorus in sodas and tea. Lastly regarding your food. Foods that cause kidney stones are dark greens (broc, asperigus, spinach, etc) and then the salty stuff like nuts, chocolate, and other "salty things".
I wish you all the best. Hopefully the hospital did an IVP and made sure you actually passed the stone. If not, you could end up septic..like i did once and i almost lost a kidney due to the infection that set in because the urine got so backed up from the blockage.
Good luck, i wish you all the best. I know how painful those little boogers are.
GettinHealthy- Oh yes, i definatelly passed it. Sat down to pee, had a sharp pain, and then i heard a small " clink " in the urine catch. When i looked down, there it was. It was black with lots of jagged edges, about half the size of a pea. i kid you not. i went and told the nurse " ummmm...there's a rock in my urine ", and she didn't believe me. She went to look and thought it was so big that i must have put it there myself, so she sent it to the lab to verify it was a kidney stone. Of course, it was. Duh. She was really surprised at the size of it, and said she initially didn't believe me because she's heard grown men screaming when passing tiny stones, and i didn't at all, and mine was huge.
Yes, i was also told that once your body becomes a " stone maker " that you can get them over and over again. i have to get checked for them again at 3 months, 6 months, a year, and 3 years from now. If i go that long without another, i might be ok. Yeah, that pain isn't even funny. i literally could not remain conscious, it was so bad. Kept passing out on the floor.
OH MY GOSH. That is a HUGE stone. Arent they gross looking though? Mine looked like a piece of "sugar in the raw"...kind of that brown glass color, really jagged and sharp like raw sugar too. I am like you though. Mine hurt in the ureter (kidney to bladder). They are fine once they get in the urethra (from bladder to toilet tube). Now my dad, his kills him with pain from the bladder to toilet. But being men, they have a longer urethra because of the penis. With women, the trip from the bladder to toilet is only a couple of inches...thank goodness.
THat is so great that you passed it on your own though. I have passed mine by myself all but once...had to have a stent put in, then lithotripsy to break it up...all while i was septic with 105 fever...bummer.
But anyway. I dont know how you feel about alcohol. But whenever i start to get that faint little pain in my side and back, I will go drink a beer. I hate beer, i hate the taste of it, but it is really good to clear the kidneys quick. That is what my doc said to do...kind of funny for your doc to recommed a beer but it works. But he said for maintenence, use lemons whenever possible and cranberry juice should always be my juice of choice. Apparently cranberry juice lubes up the urinary tract and helps them slide out easier.
I am sorry to keep talking about it, but, i am sure you can relate, once you have pain like that...you will do about anything to never have that again. My husband asked me what was worse, labor or kidney stone? I said kidney stone for sure. With labor you have contractions...it hurts, then it stops, hurts then it stops. With kidney stones...there is NO letting up until you get that ER cocktail.
Anyway, that is great that you passed it. Always make SURE. I learned that the hard way.
Although I've never had a kidney stone, I've known plenty of people who have. One particular person gets them from drinking tap water of all things. His doctor said that he should drink purified (or even distilled) water to reduce the minerals in the water. He sometimes breaks down and orders iced tea from a restaurant, knowing full well that most restaurants don't use bottled water to make tea, and he gets another stone. I've actually not heard that soda can be a culprit.
Getnhealthy-They better be sure it was the only one. There were no others on the catscan. i keep waiting for the pain to come back. Cross my fingers and do EVERYTHING i can to keep it from happening. You're right though. Lots worse than childbirth.
Oh, just one more thing thinnythighs. I have found out through trial and error that certain medications can "encourage" stones as well. Any medication that causes "dry mouth" means that it dries membranes. So your ureters get "dry"...they are not as slick which can make stones stick more easily. I learned that on my own. I kept wondering why EVERY spring i would get kidney stones...and then all summer. but never in the winter. Well i started taking a look at EVERYTHING i put in my body. Turns out, decongestants cause drying. I have really bad allergies, so every spring i would dope up on allergy meds...all cause dryness. When i stopped taking them...i stopped having stones. Truth be told...i probably didnt stop having stones, but my stones stopped getting stuck. Keeping my tubes lubed, so to speak, would let the stones pass on through with no pain. Now i take decongestants very rarely. I control my allergies with rx nasal sprays instead of something that will dry out my whole body.
Life Changing
