At 1 AM this morning I awoke in severe abdominal pain, located just behind and above my navel. My first thought was food poisoning (I had made ravioli for dinner and both fillings I used had eggs: did they cook through?), but I had no nausea or any symptoms. I tried Aleve to mitigate the pain and PeptoBismol to counter what I thought was stomach pain, to no avail.
Finally at 5 AM I went the ER and was diagnosed with gastritis or dyspepia: a cocktail of Mylanta and lidocaine had produced some results, so I was discharged.
I made it as far as my car when I threw up the cocktail and went straight back in the ER. This time, the testing was more rigorous: I had ultrasounds, CT scans, bloodwork, and morphine (that helped a lot).
Turns out I have my third kidney stone, and the staff seemed to think it was a large-ish one. I was sent off with a prescription for percocet and the hopes and wishes of my attending physician that the thing will pass by itself.
Three of these is three too many, so I have been doing a little research on why they form and what to do about them.
This site has a lot of information, some of it counter to the conventional wisdom. For example, take a look at this list of foods that may contribute to kidney stone formation: that’s a lot of my diet.
Additionally, persons prone to the most common type of kidney stones (calcium oxalate) may find it advisable to cut back on foods with high oxalate levels such as those listed below to help prevent future stone formation:
* apples
* asparagus
* beer
* beets
* berries, various
* black pepper
* broccoli
* cheese
* chocolate
* cocoa
* coffee
* cola drinks
* collards
* figs
* grapes
* ice cream
* milk
* oranges
* parsley
* peanut butter
* pineapples
* spinach
* Swiss chard
* rhubarb
* tea
* turnips
* vitamin C
* yogurt
And this isn’t too comforting:
The chance of having recurring stones are about 70-80 percent once a person suffers their first stone attack. After the first kidney stone attack occurs in a person they have a cumulative 10 percent chance per year of forming another stone (if no other stones are present at the time of the first stone attack). This translates into a 50% chance over a 5 year period of time. Family genetic tendencies can increase this risk.
The younger a person is when they have their first kidney stone attack the greater their personal risk of having additional attacks. Those between the ages of 35 and 50 are in their peak stone formation period.
So I need to drink still more water (I drink a couple of quarts a day now, in addition to what I drink at meals) and cut back on some of these things (swiss chard and turnips won’t be hard to drop from my diet).
I’ll have to see if I can stretch the interval a bit more: so far I have gone from four years to six years. I’ll try for ten or more . . . .