Over the 2007 Christmas holidays, we drove from Calgary to Vancouver, through the snowy mountain roads, about 1000 kms of beautiful mountain scenery. Our Subaru AWD got us to our downtown Vancouver B&B safely and without mechanical difficulty, which is admirable for a vehicle that had almost 200,000 kms behind her.
We went from snow to rain, and more rain, with low hanging clouds that make you feel like a prison. I was the only one in our small family willing to go for walks in the cold rain that fell dutifully every day. Vancouver is a beautiful city, with lots to do, including visiting the aquarium, and historic Gas Town.
Once early rainy Vancouver morning, around 4 am, I woke up with a severe pain in my back on the left side. I thought that my appendix was going to burst or something. Luckily there was nobody waiting in the hospital emergency room that morning, and they must have seen me squirming in the waiting room, because they had me seeing a doctor within an hour (a miracle by today's standard). The doctor questioned me for a few minutes, and told me I probably had a kidney stone that was passing, and that it would be painful until it passes. They were going to put me on morphine, but I refused. I was just so happy that it was only a kidney stone, and that it would soon pass, that I didn't care about the pain, and I am not interested in drugs unless they are absolutely necessary. A CT Scan confirmed the 2 mm stone on the left side had entered the ureter.
Interestingly, about six months earlier I went to the local medical clinic in Calgary, with back pain on both sides. They did a blood and urine test, and said that it was probably muscle pain in the back. Unconvinced, I left there, and didn't do anything further about it.
After the stone passed on the left side in December 2007, I was starting to experience more and more pain. A call to the Vancouver hospital in an attempt to obtain the CT scan results was fruitless and ended up in an argument between myself and the woman on the other end of the phone. Anybody that has dealt with health care in Canada in the last few years would understand the reasons behind such an argument.
I finally went to my family doctor, and told her that I was experiencing pain in my back. She knew about the previous kidney stone, and responded, "oh, you have another kidney stone". She assumed that I must be passing a stone, and gave me some drugs to help me through the pain. However, this was a different kind of pain - not the same as passing a stone. The next step was an ultrasound, which revealed that there was a stone, but still in the right kidney, not passing through the ureter. Luckily I had made the decision not to take the drugs she had prescribed. This stone was almost one centimeter, and not likely to pass on its own. She referred me to a urologist in Calgary to deal with the matter.
The urologist appointment finally came about 3 months later, with my back pain getting worse all of the time. I was also by this point having difficulty eating, and had to cut many things out of my diet. I was losing quite a bit of weight. The urologist sent me for an x-ray in the building next store, with instructions to come back with the result. Amazingly, the x-ray was completed in a matter of minutes, with the results saved on a disk minutes later, and I was back in his office. He reviewed the results, and recommended lithotripsy, a procedure where they wack the stone repeatedly with sound shock waves to break it up (my family doctor told me it was a laser treatment, which is technically not correct). The advantage is it doesn't require any invasive surgery. As you might guess, the appointment for the lithotripsy was set for yet another 2 months, almost a half year from the time I saw my doctor the first time. By the way, the urologist never asked me any of my symptoms.
The lithotripsy was an efficient and easy procedure to go through. While it was painful, the pain was manageable without drugs, although the drugs are offered as an option. The entire procedure was less than a half hour, and the total time I was at the hospital was about 1 hour. The doctor said it had mostly broken up the stone, and that the fragments should pass within a matter of weeks at the most.
I gave up screening my urine after about a month, as nothing was passing. At first, I did feel better, I have to admit, but then the symptoms came back. One unusual symptom that I had been having for a long time was severe pain all around my teeth. My dentist told me that I had sensitive teeth to cold, but I suspected it was more than that. The pain sometimes occured after being out in the cold, but not always. It would last for about 20 to 30 minutes and was debilitating, and often led to a headache. After the lithotripsy, the back pain minimized, and the teeth pain went away, even in the cold.
I went back for the follow up appointment about 1 month later, and there was three fragmented stones still in the kidney. The doctor couldn't tell where exactly they were, so he sent me for a CT scan. It took about 45 days to get the scan, and another 30 days to see the doctor again. By this time it was March of 2009, and my back pain had returned and I was having a very difficult time eating, and still losing weight. I went into the hospital complaining of back pain, and they thought I had gall stones, and didn't believe that a kidney stone could be causing these symptoms. After waiting in the hospital emergency for 12 hours, they sent me a way for a test and told me that it would go to my family doctor.
I made an appointment with the family doctor, and she said she didn't receive the results, and that due to confidentiality reasons, the results wouldn't be sent over and she would have to request the results. Not sure why the other doctor said he would send them if it is not possible to do so.
A couple of days later, I had my appointment with the urologist, and told him that I was having lots of troubles with pain when I eat, and he thought I had a gall stone too! He wouldn't believe that a kidney stone could cause these symptoms. This time he told me that we could do another lithotripsy (not sure why I had to go through all of the tests to determine this), and the lithotripsy would be in three weeks. The procedure is coming up on Monday, April 13th, and I am crossing my fingers that this will be resolved once and for all, almost a year later!
Wish me luck!!!
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