Hallelujah! The kidney stone has passed! The pain that caused me to visit the Emergency Room Wednesday, December 17 has gone and with it the stone. Yes, yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, the stone that was caught in my ureter slipped into my bladder and came out in my urine. You might ask, “Didn’t that hurt?” No, it did not. In fact, to have it outside of me rather than inside was a significant relief. More about passing the stone, later.
The stone seen on CT measured 5 mm. For pespective, there are 10 millimeters in a centimeter (cm) and 2.54 centimeters (cm) in one inch. One inch, then, is 25.4 mm. Converting mm to inches, my 5 mm stone is 3 16ths of an inch in its longest diameter. “That’s not very big,” you say. No, it’s not, but when a kidney stone breaks loose, it can get hung up at two places—at the narrowings where the ureter begins and where it ends. The ureter is the long tube connecting the kidney with the bladder, and a stuck kidney stone causes the ureter to spasm. It’s the ureteral spasm that causes the pain.
When I left the ER Wednesday afternoon, I was pain free until 1:00 am that night. The left lower abdominal pain returned for about 30 minutes. The pain flared up, but eased quickly and never returned. The ER gave me a strainer (pictured above on the left) to filter my urine. The strainer has a very fine mesh filter, and fortunately, Saturday afternoon a hard, black speck was filtered from my urine. The left side picture was exactly what I saw. The penny in the strainer is there only for size reference. I retrieved the stone and sealed it in an envelope, and will take it with me to my urologist’s appointment. He may or may not send it for analysis.
More about passing the stone: Once it gets in the bladder, the stone does not cause pain. It floats in the bladder urine until it positions itself to enter the urethra and pass out in my urine. The diameter of the urethra is much larger than that of the stone so it passes through in the urine unimpeded. The picture above, except for the penny, was exactly what I saw. The right picture again, gives us perspective about the size of the stone.
Thankfully, now I’m pain free and I’m free of this stone. I must next, deal with the multiple other stones the CT showed in both kidneys. As long as they stay put, I’ll be fine. But why are they there? Could I have another parathyroid adenoma? My nephrologist will look into that I’m certain. But for now, I feel fine and hope the stones that remain stay where they are.
