Kidney Stones!?
One night, when Seth was eight years old, he felt sick and started having pains in his back. Then he started vomiting. We had no idea what was going on. It would stop for a little while and then start up again. This went on for a couple of hours and we thought maybe he had a stomach bug. However, the pain in his back was getting worse and he couldn't keep anything down. We decided to take a ride in the middle of the night and go to the ER at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
By the time we got there, he was pretty dehydrated and we thought that his symptoms could mean he either had kidney stones or a problem with his appendix. Now, as much as we hate going to the hospital ER, we love the fact that CHOP is so close, just over the bridge about 20 minutes from our home. Yes there are hospitals closer, but from past experiences (you know, we raised two active boys!) we felt CHOP was our best option.
They started an IV when we arrived to re-hydrate him. The attending was trying to figure out what the problem was. Now remember, our kids are no dummies. Seth told the attending that he felt the pain was in his kidneys. The attending promptly told Seth that his idea of where kidney's are, and Seth's probably differed. WHAT?! This kid is telling you he's having kidney pain and you're "poo pooing" it? At the time, we really didn't have a clue either so we went with the recommendation to have an ultrasound of his appendix. . . .which of course showed nothing.
By the time he was done with the IV and was re-hydrated, he felt better. We ended up going home only to have the vomiting and pain start again about an hour later. We ended up seeing a kidney specialist at CHOP and after some tests, lo and behold they found five stones in one of his kidneys. Most of them were too large to come out on their own and we had to schedule a procedure to have them removed. Seth was right and the attending was just an idiot. LISTEN TO YOUR PATIENTS, EVEN IF THEY'RE 8!
If you know anything about this procedure, they basically "go in" from a place that is usually an outlet, not an inlet. They found that since he was so young, the intake tube where the tools go to extract the stones was too small. They had to insert a stent to make it larger and we had to wait another 3 weeks to have a second procedure done to remove the stones. The second time was successful!
One of the worst parts about having the stones, aside from the idiot attending at CHOP, is that Seth had to stop taking Martial Arts classes for about a month or two so he could have the stones removed and then heal. That kind of sucked!
If you've ever had kidney stones, you know how painful they can be. A few years after Seth's episode, I also ended up with kidney stones. I've been fairly fortunate that, for the most part, I haven't experienced the pain or sickness most people get with stones, but there were a few times I did. For some reason my body likes creating these things. I have had two procedures to have stones removed, and as of this writing, it looks like I'm going to need another. There's a 7mm stone stuck on its way out.
I usually know when there's a stone brewing because I get a weird kind of stomach ache. The recent one would come and go for a few weeks and I did end up passing some stones during this time. However, my body doesn't usually make just one or two. We happened to be in the hospital for my wife to have her hip replaced (that's a whole other story!), and I started getting that feeling. It was worse than usual, I was in pain and nauseous most of the day and ended up in the ER that night. Convenient that we were already at the hospital. I had a CAT scan and they said that the stone was just out of the kidney but looked like it was obstructing, that's never a good thing.
Have you ever noticed when big medical practices merge with other big medical practices that their messaging and phone systems always get screwed up? I spent 3 weeks trying to get a hold of my urologist with no luck. I did have an appointment coming up and was able to get it moved up sooner, but I needed to talk to him or his nurse. I'll see him in a couple of days and will most likely schedule a procedure. Not fun, especially since this thing is still trying to come out and it's certainly taking its good old time. It could very well be stuck and not able to come out on its own. This sucks! Advil and Tylenol are my best friends right now.