I'd rather have 4 more children than have 1 more kidney stone. We spoke with Dr. The following is an edited version of that interview:. How do you diagnose kidney stones?
One of the most common presentations is the flank pain on one side. It sometimes radiates down into the stomach, and it can actually radiate down into the genital area. That type of pain is pretty commonly seen in stone patients. Sometimes there's nausea and vomiting. Those type of symptoms are something that gives us a clue that this may be a stone. The CAT scan is the gold standard for imaging for kidney stones. That's usually the way to diagnose it.
You can't do it from a blood test or anything else. What it does is, it blocks the flow of urine in the kidney, and it causes backup. And it's an excruciating pain. A lot of people do describe it as worse than childbirth.
When the system is trying to push urine out, what happens is: your kidney and your ureter -- they have this muscle propagation that goes down the kidney into the ureter -- when it's trying to push and the stone is blocking it, you get these intense pains. That's why we call it colicky, it comes and goes and it's extremely painful and the main reason for the pain is the backup of urine. Usually, if they have two kidneys, they urinate fine, because you're getting urine on the other side.
The problem is, that kidney is producing urine but it can't get pushed down. If you take a pipe and you clog it off and somehow you're still getting fluid into the other end The backup is like that. It causes a great deal of pain because you're expanding your system. You don't have any pop-off valve. Once it starts expanding, it's expanding unnaturally. It's called hydronephrosis, and it's basically backup of urine into the kidney.
What to do for kidney stones. This causes a back up of urine that causes the kidney to expand painfully. This process, called hydronephrosis, is what often causes the pain of kidney stones.
This kind of pain usually presents on one side and can radiate downward as far as the genitals. There can also be nausea and vomiting from the pain of the stone. When there is a kidney stone blocking the flow of urine, your body will still try to push the urine out. There is intense pain from the body using muscles to try to push out the backup of urine that is blocked by the stone. While not all broken bones are the same, some, like a compound fracture of a femur, will knock you off your feet for some time.
In addition to needing to wear a large cast for a long period of time, compound fractures may also require surgery to place hardware, like pins and screws, into your body. The location of the break and how you use that part of the body can also determine how painful it is.
A broken rib might ache every time you take a breath, whereas a pinky-finger fracture might be fairly well stabilized and not as painful once it's in a splint or cast. Some broken bones require weeks or months of treatment and years of residual pain.
Childbirth, on the other hand, only lasts several hours, and even very long labor rarely lasts more than a weekend. Headaches can be severe—beyond the typical ones where you pop an over-the-counter pain pill and continue about your day.
Many people with migraines wind up taking prescription pain medication to both prevent and treat these symptoms. Another type of headache is said to be even worse. Cluster headaches cause extreme pain around the eye socket, can last for hours, and reoccur daily. Sufferers have described cluster headaches as feeling as though you are giving birth through your eyeball, but without the prize of a baby when you are done.
Kidney stones form in your urinary tract and have to be passed. This means that the stone, either whole or broken into bits, will need to come out. Kidney stones usually pass through the urinary tract and exit the body through the urethra. Some stones require surgery. Symptoms of kidney stones can include:. Women who have experienced both kidney stones and childbirth say passing a stone is worse than childbirth. After all, the body is not designed to pass kidney stones, but it is made to birth a baby.
Gallstones are small stones in the gallbladder that can cause quite a bit of pain. While there are pain medications and nutritional guidelines to help manage these, gallstones can plague you for a long time or come in waves of attacks. These attacks frequently include symptoms like:. While some gallbladder attacks can be dealt with by simply prescribing pain medication and a new diet, after a while there may be a need for surgery to remove the gallbladder itself.
Many people compare the pain of childbirth with the pain of dental work. A root canal, for example, is a painful procedure: A hole is drilled inside the tooth and the nerve underneath the tooth is removed from the root.
A filling is used to fill the tooth back up, and the pain stops because the nerve has been removed. The pain of a root canal starts before the procedure with a toothache that can last a while before getting in to see the dentist.
While the intense pain involved does stop once the root is removed, there is residual soreness. The aftermath of the root canal can affect your daily activities for a couple of days, make it difficult to eat, and require pain medication. Women who have needed root canal say it is worse than childbirth. Surgery is obviously painful, though some surgeries are more involved than others. Cutting tissue, muscles, or organs, or moving internal structures to get to the part of the body that requires surgery will leave a person in pain for days and weeks afterward.
Heart surgery, for example, requires the sternum to be cracked and removed to get to the heart. The pain from this can last for weeks and maybe months, often requiring therapy to help manage. Surgeries that involve the use of laparoscopy are less painful than surgeries where a larger incision is made.
While both have elements of pain, some may last longer depending on the type of surgery, the location of the incision or surgery, and the health of the individual. Needless to say, recovery from surgery can be more painful than childbirth.
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