Kidney Stones - Clearwater,FL

Kidney stone pain can come and go because the stone moves. The pain can get so bad that you get sick and vomit. If he has one, he will need heavy pain Meds.

If he has herniated discs they can hit the cystic nerve. That happens to me all the time. I don't think kidney stones would affect the leg. But I could be wrong.

I'm curious as to why you think it's kidney stones. Has he ever had issues with kidney stones before?

Until you deal with kidney stones regularly, it hurts worse than anything you'll ever know. I currently have 32 stones in one kidney and over 40 in the other. I slowly pass a few each day. It's gotten to the point where I can feel it, but I've become so accustomed to the pain that it doesn't phase me the way it used to. You won't necessarily see blood in the urine. The pain can come and go, but it has nothing to do with you moving, only the stone moving.

If he has back issues, it's more than likely his back. There's a huge difference between the "spasms" of kidney stones and the muscle in the back. You will not have muscle spasms with kidney stones.

I have kidney stones. Right now, I've got over 20 in my kidneys. Just in the last six months, I have passed two.

Kidney stones do not feel like back spasms. At least for me, they start out feeling like the most intense cramp you've ever had (in the kidney area), and as the pain intensifies it radiates around to your sides and back. At this point, I am in the emergency room, and the pain is WORSE than being in labor with no drugs...because it's as BAD as being in labor, but there's no relief, no let up. Each time I have passed one, the pain was bad enough to make me throw up.

A muscle relaxer does not help kidney stones. For acute pain, when you are passing a stone, heavy narcotics are often the only thing that works...and even then, it has to be through an IV.

I do have chronic achiness in my kidneys from this, which translates as lower back pain, and I do occasionally have to take medication or I have a hard time making it through the day.

It sounds like your husband has something else going on...be thankful for that! He would absolutely know if he had kidney stones because for a man, it would be the worst pain he had EVER experienced!

I hope he sorts out what's going on soon and feels better.

Kidney stones are a constant aching pain and when they pass through the tiny duct from the kidney to the bladder they REALLY hurt, like moaning and rolling on the ground pain and vomiting from the extreme pain kind of hurt. The duct from the bladder to the outside world is much wider and it generally does not hurt to pass kidney stones there. My husband had this aching never ending pain, went to a surgeon since his MD thought it might be a hernia, the surgeon found a teeny tiny hernia that he operated on, pain continued, husband went to urologist who looked at the film from the surgeon months and months earlier and found a HUGE kidney stone on that same film (11 mm in diameter - hubby had it radiated with ultrasound and then passed the pulverized stone). My cautions are: 1. whatever specialist you go see tends to look only into their specialty area and might miss OBVIOUS signs for something else. Just because they are a doctor does not mean they are generalists. 2. ask for WORST case recovery time. They told my husband after the outpatient ultrasound breaking-up of the stone that he would need "some pain meds and 2 days rest". Instead I drove him back to the ER that night where they gave him morphine RELEASED him, the next day he was vomiting from the pain again, back to the ER, where the admitted him to the hospital for 5 days stay on morphine, then another week at home in bed. His was an UNUSUALLY large stone so hopefully your experience will be gentler.
Go see a urologist if you think it might be kidney stones, but it is aching, never letting up pain.

Yes I've had them and yes the pain can come and go. It is only really painful when they are on the move, and they can move and stop and move and stop. Sometimes you can see the blood in the urine and usually that is the point where it is really painful and about to pass (hopefully) but sometimes there is blood that is not noticeable to the naked eye.

I would say this deserves a trip to the doctor and possibly an x-ray.

When my hubby got his first kidney stone, he thought he was going to die and begged me to just shoot him, I felt going to the hospital was the better course of action.

Since then, he has gotten several. Each time he seemed to develop a stronger tolerance for the pain which was consistant and always started in his lower back adjacent to his spine and moved laterally around to the front as the stone did, never to the groin area until it was getting ready to pass. (the really ugly part)

He passed 2 in the last two days and barely batted an eye, he just asked me for an Aleve and the remote control. Which since he is 60 now was nothing out of the ordinary, I didn't even know it until he told me he had passed the first one. I guess I'm back in the running for the worst wife of the year. hahahaha

Given that if your husband has had the herniated discs for a long period of time, there is no telling how high his pain threshold is. I would definately opt for having it checked out just to be safe.

I've had 3! They feel like someone is taking something sharp and scraping down your insides. NOT FUN! It is a sharp,excruciating pain, that caused me not to be able to sit still at all. It can also make you have the urge to go to the bathroom and can make you nauseated and can cause vomiting.

I guess because mine were so bad, I did see blood in my urine, so that is possible. (At first I thought I was having a period again, but it wasn't, it was the stones)

With my first one, after it was diagnosed in the ER, the nurse treating me told me, "honey, this will be the closest pain to childbirth that you will ever experience". Considering that I was 21 at the time, that was terrifying! And the kidney stones were far worse pain than childbirth. The epidural with my second child did not take effect before I had to push and it was nothing compared to the stones.

Get him to a doctor to have an ultrasound to see if they can locate a stone and check his urine for blood. Meanwhile make him drink fluids like crazy. So sorry. These suck!

my dad used to get them all the time when I was a kid. I remember we would all be sleeping and my mom would come in and tell me she was taking my dad to the ER for another kidney stone. My brother was 5 years older than me (old enough to stay home and babysit) so she would leave us at home and let us sleep. I remember my dad would be on the ground screaming in pain. He would also be throwing up all over. It was awful. I've never asked him to describe the pain to me before, but I would think if your husband has made it with out going to the ER about to pass out in pain, then I don't think it's a kidney stone. But I can't say that 100% for sure. That's just what I saw my dad go through many many times. I hope you husband feels better soon!

ER thinks I might have passed a kidney stone a few years ago and my 16 year old daughter had to have surgery to get a kidney stone taken out last year. If that is what I had, I think it was equivilant to labor pains, and it lasted longer w/o having the joy of a baby in the end!! It was awful!! As far as my daughter was, she was writhing on the table on the ER begging for the pain to stop. She has a really high thresh hold for pain as well and it felt like it took forever for the pain meds to work. Her pain started out where she was running X-Country and her back was hurting her. She ended up quitting running because of the pain in her back, but we didn't realize it was the stone. Then she started getting cramps that were in her back and also somewhat on her side but she wasn't on her cycle. But they did go away. I took her into the Dr. but they didn't think it was a stone so pretty much showed her stretching exercises. Then came the bloody urine and they knew.

If it is a stone, give your hubby lots of love and understanding...cuz it hurts!!

GOOD LUCK!

Spasms are NOT usually a symptom of a kidney stone. They are usually a symptom of a disk issue. He may just need to lay down on his back and do some simple stretches to try and move stuff around.

I have disk issues too and I can reach down to slip my pants over my feet and when I get up I have spasms. I can reach for the iron and feel it in my lower back and have pain for a couple of days.

All the muscles are attached to the spine and even moving one can effect ones that you didn't know you were using.

I would say call the doc and have hubby go pee in a cup for the lab. They are truly the only ones that can see the blood. No one else can usually see it or detect it. If you can see the blood in his urine with your own eyes then he's in big trouble.

My hubby has had several kidney stones, the pain from them is so bad he can't function at all. He lays in bed taking pain meds and pukes because the pain just makes men puke. It is that bad. If hubby had a kidney stone I think he would be walking to the ER if you wouldn't take him, that's how painful a kidney stone is.

Picture it this way......A cockle burr sticker that is larger around than a McDonald's straw trying to be pushed down a Sonic straw by the force of liquid behind it. That's what a kidney stone feels like. It is causing inflammation in each tiny bit of Urethra tube it is coming in contact with, it gets hung up on a piece of tissue until it is ripped off and moved a tiny fraction of an inch. The only thing making it move is the pressure of the blocked urine behind it. There is nothing else that will make it move.

Here is a great picture of what a kidney stone might look like, these are cockle burrs by an artist.

http://www.artistrising.com/products/604728/Stickers-II.htm

If your hubby has a kidney stone shaped much like one of these he would be screaming in pain constantly, until it gets from the kidney to the bladder then when it moves out of the bladder until it gets expelled. He would be in chronic constant excruciating pain. No pain med would be able to make it go completely away either. The narcotics can dull the pain but it is still there, just a bit less.

These are all the reasons I think your hubby might just be having a disk issue. Everything you are describing is 100% the symptoms of a disk being irritated and acting up.

Of course only a doc can tell but if it is a kidney stone.... Our urologist told my daughter how to picture what is going on in the kidney's.

If you take a gallon jar and fill it with sand. Then add one drop of water. What happens.....you get a hard rock like particle because the sand will stick together and that drop of water will dry up.

If you take that gallon jar and add a gallon of water and put in a drop of sand what happens....the sand basically can't stick together because the water surrounds it. There is no possibility of it forming any sort of rock like substance. This is why people with kidney issues need to drink a lot of distilled water each day.

There are several ways to treat them.

Let it work it's own way out and just help it along with a lot of distilled water being drank. All water has minerals in it, distilled water has the least particles. It is the best for anyone to drink that has any kind of kidney issue.

Drinking a lot of water and taking meds to help with the pain will always help but when they just can't make it out on their own or there are way too many they might sit hubby in a tank and turn on some sound waves. This will pommel his kidneys and break up the larger stones that are sitting in his body already, if he has them, then as they get finer and finer the ultra sounds will show tiny bits, much like a very fine sand. These are what everyone normally expels when we urinate. My cousin felt like he had been in a wreck for about a week but he worked in a college library so he went right back to work the next day.

It may be one that the Urologist would have to use his little basket and go up the tube and grab it then pull it out by force.

It is so easy for a doctor to test for kidney stones. They would first check to see if there is blood in the urine (which no one can see with the human eye). If there is, the next step is usually to do a ct-scan (or similar type of x-ray) to confirm that it is a kidney stone causing the blood, how big the stone is, where it's located, etc.

It's been a couple of years (thankfully) since I've had a stone, but I don't think I would describe the pain as a spasm. I thought it was a lot like menstrual cramps, but 10 times worse and it never let up. I did have a kidney stone once where the pain would come and go because the stone moved, but for most of my stones (and I've had more than I can count) the pain is really, really bad and it does not go away. A couple of times it was so bad I kept vomiting.

It's possible he had kidney stones, but you really need to take him to the doctor to run some tests. That's the only way to know.

Good luck! Hope he gets some relief soon.

I've never had kidney stones, but my ex-husband gets them.
They are excruciatingly painful. He suffers until he passes them, but he's had to have a procedure to break them up small enough for that to happen.

He doesn't get that as often since he completely revised his diet, but he certainly knows when he's got them. He doesn't really get blood in his urine so that's not a definitive symptom. He also has lower back problems, but he's become very familiar with the difference.

I think it merits running things past the doctor. If your husband is pain free now, it's possible he did pass a kidney stone, but he might have just had back spasms. Hard to say.

It's best to get things checked out while you are experiencing symptoms because there is no way to know what it was after the fact.

Hopefully your husband's episode is over and he won't have any further problems.

Best wishes.

My dad went to the doc last week thinking he had a hernia. The doctor thought it was kidney stones. He got his C. scan results yesterday and the doctor now thinks it is muscular. My dad has been taking one Aleve per day which has helped with the pain.

My husband had 2 in the past 11 years, and they were both within a 3 year period. He was doubled over in pain, I think I saw him cry, and he was literally unable to walk. He had to go to the ER both times. They gave him meds, got him comfortable, and got the stones to pass.

If your hubby is in that much pain, I'd go back to the doctor. Poor guy.

Kidney stones can be diagnosed on ultrasound and often dissolved with simple techniques. Not sure why you think this is the cause - any other indicators? If he has herniated discs, there can be flare ups whether he remembers doing anything or not. There is an over the counter product for joint inflammation that improves the discs - it's all food and no meds. It's not overnight but it's patented and proven. I can help with that.

He may have blood in his urine but you and he may be unable to see it. My husband tested positive for having blood in the urine when he was passing a stone (his first so it was all new to us) but the blood was not visible to the eye.

The only way to KNOW if there are stones present is to have an ultrasound. Have him talk with his doctor and ask explicitly if this could be kidneys stones, and whether the doctor will OK an ultrasound to find out. The symptoms act like many other things (muscle problems, appendicitis, etc.) so it's difficult to tell. With your husband's back problems, it's going to be hard to know unless the doctor does some tests both for his kidneys and his back.

Meanwhile, have him drink and drink and drink water. It cannot hurt even if there are no stones, and if there are, it will help. Some.