Kidney Stones

[kal]

Wow, I thought drinking arizona ice teas instead of the usual 32oz soda was going to help prevent stones.

What about iced coffees and such? Are they likely to contribute to stone formation? I drink 2 a day from Mcdonalds.

[citizensoldier16]

Whats weird is that they're kinda common for people in VA.

Sweet tea, my friend...and no, I'm not joking.

[M4arc]

Wow, I thought drinking arizona ice teas instead of the usual 32oz soda was going to help prevent stones.

What about iced coffees and such? Are they likely to contribute to stone formation? I drink 2 a day from Mcdonalds.

My urologist told me that coffee goes through you so fast it doesn't matter.

Chocolate is a big contributor as well. I didn’t really question him; I’ll do whatever he says to prevent another stone.

[M4arc]

Sweet tea, my friend...and no, I'm not joking.

No you're not.

[Robb Jensen]

I have about 5 Arizona diet Green Teas a year. I don't like sweet tea at all. I drink 3-4 diet sodas a week I really need to quit drinking them all together. I'm drinking about 20oz of coffee per day, in the summer I cut the coffee intake in half. I drink about 1-1.5 quarts of water a day and I know I need to drink more water.

At my old job I worked outside all the time and drank 2-4 gallons of water in the summer and about 1 gallon per day in the winter.

I've had heat stroke twice where I actually passed out and was taken away to the hospital for IV fluids (once in 1988 and again in 1993) and have come pretty close a couple of other times so whenever I'm sweating a lot I'm downing the water mixed with some gatorade like it's going out of style. I like Propel too in hot weather. This is the main reason I never take training courses in the summer months. I don't even like matches in the really hot weather for the same reason. I'd rather be cold than hot.

[tanker]

I can understand your pain. I was a kidney stone manufacturing company. After 13 years, 19 surgeries and too many stints to remember, they finally found a overactive parathyroid gland. Since they removed it I've been stone free now for 2 1/2 years. Knock on wood!

[HighSpeedDreams]

M4arc, consider yourself lucky. I was told by the E.R. that they don't start blastin until the stone gets to 10mm. I had to wait 3 months for my 8mm to piss out. Looked like a gnarly space rock.

[Jake Bauer]

had one in February. It sucked. I had to have the bugger shocked out of me because after a week, the thing hadnt moved at all.

I decided to quit drinking Dr. pepper and started drinking sweet tea every morning. i think that's what did it to me. Now I'm 90% water, 6% juice, and 4% tea.

Thank God for Demerol.

[PaulL]

I had one a couple years ago. I'm also ultra-sensitive to just about every pain med out there, so those were a no-go. They told me it was a 2mm stone and it would pass, but they were seeing it in two dimensions. It was more like 2mm x 7mm. I had it for over a month and couldn't get it to leave the kidney, so a friend that works for a urologist gave me a sample of Flomax (the prostate stuff). Apparently, that stuff enlarges the "pipes". An hour after taking the pill I could feel it moving down to the bladder and I spit it out the next day.


The offender, or what was left of it after haphazard toilet bowl retrieval:




I paid to have it analyzed, started avoiding the stuff that caused it, and have been stone-free so far.

[FlyAndFight]

As others have already testified, the pain is brutal. I've had two episodes with the stones and they had me talking to myself like an idiot and marching back and forth in desperation. The first was about 5 years ago. The following month I started to have pains again and went straight to the hospital. I told them it wasn't bad at all compared to the previous month's pain. After they finished running every test known to man, they rushed me into surgery, as my appendix was rupturing. That was a tickle compared to the stones of the month before.

About a month or two ago, I got hit again. It wasn't as bad as the first time but it did have me marching again...

Sodas are definitely a no-no. But I've been drinking cranberry juice like it was going out of style. It's supposed to be very good for the kidneys.