Yes, they are the most painful thing you can go through. I shudder just thinking about them as I recall my horror almost 9 years ago with them.
I had been lifting a lot of weights at the time and a buddy convinced me to go on creatine. I did and followed the loading where you take mega doses for the first week or so then regular doses from then on.
After about a month of taking it I bought a new washer and dryer. My brother was supposed to help me put them in my basement but he never showed up. I had a dolly with tracks on the back and I figured I could get them downstairs myself, so I strapped the washer to the dolly, laid it back so it was on the tracks and eased it down the steps. Went like a charm and so did the dryer. Figured I’d hook them up the next day.
Later that night (I lived alone at the time) I fell asleep on the couch watching TV and was awoke by the most uncomfortable pain in my lower left back. It was like someone had me in a vice grip and I could barely breath. I was convinced I fucked up my back moving the appliances. I tried a hot shower, tried stretching on the floor, hung from a door jamb by my hands trying to stretch but nothing made the pain go away. I was 28, never had a back injury and was convinced I screwed myself up. I loaded up my two dogs and drove them across town at about 2 in the morning to my mother’s house so she could watch them while I checked myself into the emergency room. Only by the time I got there the pain had partially gone away, so I ended up falling asleep on her couch with a heating pad convinced I pulled a muscle. I woke up at about 6am with the same pain and went straight to the ER. When I got there I could barely walk and they checked me in. When the nurse suggested kidney stones I was like, no way, but the blood in the urine and a subsequent CTscan showed a large stone stuck in the tube between the kidney and the bladder.
After a few hours in the ER (the pain went away suddenly almost immediately after getting checked in) they sent me home with the strainer to pee into and told me to bring the stone in when I passed it. All day Saturday I felt fine with no pain (although I dreaded the horror to come each time I took a leak) and Sunday I felt 100% fine too. Yet I knew the worst was yet to come.
Woke up at 5am Monday curled up in sweat on the floor beside my bed in the most god awful pain ever. Somehow managed to get dressed and drove to the ER. As soon as I walked in the same security guy was at the desk as Saturday morning and he recognized me as I walked in doubled over in pain. A nurse came right away and they whisked me off to a bed and gave me some pain meds (demoral maybe?) but that wasn’t cutting it. I could not sit or lay down and kept pacing, bent over 90 degrees in pain, beside my bed. They told me when the meds kicked in I would be groggy and I needed to lay down but I couldn’t. I begged for something more then they gave me some morphine I think. Whatever it was it worked and I woke up 4 hours later in an actual room as I had been admitted while I slept.
The urologist comes in and tells me the stone isn’t moving and is stuck and I’m scheduled for surgery the next day. Now I’m freaking out. In all my life I"ve never been admitted to a hospital (many trips to the ER, some stitches, some broken bones but never actually stayed overnight/been admitted) and I’ve never had any type of surgery. He then explains the procedure and when I realize they don’t make any incisions to send the laser to the stone and that they take a ‘direct route’ I’m really a wreck. He tells me unless I pass it the surgery is on for Tuesday. I know I have a cutoff when I have to stop drinking/eating so I drink gallons and gallons of water that day trying to pass the stone. Meanwhile there is no pain and all day monday, monday night and tuesday morning I feel fine.
Unsurprisingly I don’t pass the stone and have the surgery. The last thing I remember as I’m being wheeled into the OR is the nurse telling me she’s had both kidney stones and two kids, and the stones hurt worse. I ask her what the fuck good does that do me and she tells me to count backwards from 10. I get to 9 and am out.
Wake up and I have to pee worse than I’ve ever had to go in my life. I’m in the recovery room, yell out that I gotta go and a nurse comes over and ‘helps me’ with a tupperware looking jug to pee in. My god it hurt worse than ever. Like pissing razor blades soaked in acid. I was still groggy but I know I screamed as I went.
I get sent home later that night. The kidney stone is gone, there is no more pain in my back but every time I take a leak it hurts so bad that I have to hold onto something so that I dont’ pass out from pain. I am told that is from the irritation of shoving a 2’ long laser up the…well you get the drift. Then, as a bonus, I learn that my tube from the kidney to the bladder was so irritated/inflamed from the stone that they had to leave a stint ( a small rubber tube) in there so that urine could flow from the kidney to the bladder. I ask what do you mean, left in there, and how the hell do you get it out. Turns out that they go right back in to get it. Only it has to stay in for 7-10 days. Later I learn in some cases the doctor will leave a string attached to it that ‘hangs out’ until the stint is ready to come out and then you just pull on the string like a magician and the never ending scarf trick, but alas I have no string hanging out.
So after a week or so I can finally take a leak without unholy pain and I have to go back into to get the stint taken out. Only they do this right in the urologists office and you are wide awake. Basically it’s lay on your back, drop the pants and he goes back in with a tube that has a light on the end and a fiber optic system so he can see the bladder. He then sends a small ‘grappler’ in through the tube and grabs the end of the stint and pulls everything out. Meanwhile there’s a saline solution going into the tube so the bladder is ‘inflated’ and he can see so the whole time it feels like you are pissing yourself.
The whole procedure took only a few minutes, but my ‘junk’ had finally healed from the irritation of having a lazer shoved up it and now it’s back to square one from having the doc have to go back and get the stint. So for the next few days it hurts like hell to piss again and I am almost brought to tears every time I have to go to the bathroom. Literally I stand at the ready at the toilet each time for 2-3 minutes just mustering up the courage to go before I can finally let loose.
Later, after the whole episode is done, I go in for a follow up. The doctor tells me the stone was big (he uses a pencil eraser as an approximate size) and that it was a very soft stone which meant if formed quickly in his opinion. He asks me a ton of questions about family history, diet etc… and nothing leads to any indication that I should have had a stone until I mention the creatine and how much I was taking at a time, especially during the loading phases. He shakes his head and says that is most likely what caused the stone and to quit and or never take it again.
Luckily, and unlike many others that have had stones, I’ve gone without any repeats. I know many people get them and the come back every few years. Although even to this date any time I get a twinge or slight pain in my lower back my HR goes through the roof and I get scared as hell that it might be another stone.
