My Battle with Kidney Stones

If you've never heard my kidney stone saga, you're in for a real treat. And if you are someone who experiences kidney stones, I feel for you. I know just how awful they are...I really do.

My story begins in the year 2000. That's the year I left New Mexico and moved to the Dallas, TX area to go to chiropractic school. And boy did I become massively dehydrated when I moved away from home.

Texans, can I just say how AWFUL your water tastes. It's like drinking from a dirty lake. Yuck!!!

And because of that, I refused to drink the water. Instead, I would haul a 5 gallon jug of water from New Mexico to my apartment in the Dallas area to basically live on while I was away at school for 3-4 months at a time. Shocking, I know.

I would cook with Texas water. And if I made tea or kool-aid (yes, this was before my nutrition habits changed), I would use Texas water. But to drink plain water? I would pull some from that 5 gallon jug from New Mexico.

Sometime during the middle of my first trimester in chiropractic school, I experienced my first kidney stone. Pain in my back, pain around into the groin, feeling like I needed to pee but not much would come out, drinking water made it worse, and I COULD NOT get comfortable. Let me tell you that this pain is worse than childbirth...and I've delivered a 10 pounder at home with no drugs. It was so excrutiating that I had to get to the ER. Of course, I was pumped full of drugs and sent home with pain meds to use until I passed the stone.

A year or so went by, then I had another.

Another year or so went by, then I had another...this one after I was married and my husband was away on business.

I've had so many now that I can't even remember if I had any others between that last one and the next one I'll tell you about. The next one was a real doozy.

I was 22 weeks pregnant with twins when I started feeling that all too familiar pain. I knew exactly what was happening. So off to the ER I went.

While all of the other stones had been around 6-8mm in size, the one that grew inside me while I was pregnant ended up being a whopping 3cm. It was NOT going to budge.

Lithotripsy was the only option I was given for treatment. But unfortunately, the procedure can't be done when you're pregnant. This meant I would have to live with the stone until after the birth of my girls....another 20+ weeks.

They did place a stent that went from my bladder up to my kidney. How it was described to me is that it's a long tube that has a small coil at both ends...one in the kidney where the urine is made and one in the bladder where the urine is supposed to go. It helps bypass the stone so urine can flow freely.

While I was thankful for the stent and free flowing urine, the coil in the bladder was super uncomfortable. It was like it was scratching the inside of my bladder anytime I would move. And it probably didn't help that the babies were pushing down on my bladder too. But it did the trick!

After I delivered my babies and was cleared a couple of months later by my OB, I was ready to get the lithotripsy procedure done and get that stent out of my body. But no way was it going to be that easy.

Turns out that my stent had calcified during the remainder of my pregnancy. They broke up the kidney stone, but they coudn't get the stent out. That meant I needed to have a repeat round of lithotripsy done a few weeks later to get the calcification off the stent. But it still wasn't going to be that easy.

Supposedly, hospital policy is that lithotripsy can only be done on an area for a certain length of time. My stent was so calcified that they couldn't get it all off at one time. So I ended up having to go back for one more round.

Third time's a charm, right? Well, they did get the stent out during the third procedure. But because the area gets so inflammed by lithotripsy, they have to place a new stent for a few days to allow urine to continue to flow. I was scheduled to have this stent removed in the doctor's office in a week. No biggie.

So a week goes by and I head to the doctor's office for the stent removal. All went well. Or so I thought.

That evening, I was continuing to experience pain similar to what I experience with kidney stones...pain in my back, pain around to the groin, feeling like I need to pee but can't, and can't sit still because no position is comfortable. The pain just increased and increased the more the night went on.

So back to the ER I went. Remember the coiled up end of the stent I mentioned earlier? Turns out when they took out the stent, the coil must have scratched the kidney or caused some sort of damage and a blood clot formed. The clot was preventing flow of urine from the kidney into the ureter to go down to the bladder...so basically acting very similar to a stone.

They had to manually go in after the clot and pull it out.

I'm pretty sure all of these procedures did some damage to my kidneys, ureter, and bladder, which is one of the reasons I was led into the world of homeopathy. From that point in time, I was able to pass stones in about 30 minutes to an hour despite them being 6+ mm in size every single time.

But I knew I needed to get to the bottom of this issue. So when I started studying homeopathy, I also became a client. With the help of my homeopath, we started getting to the bottom of the kidney issues. Healing started taking place and stones became less and less frequent.

Now I know you're wondering what remedies were used.

Medorrhinum - this is just a good overall remedy for the urinary tract. It was being used to help heal the kidney.

Berberis vulgaris - this is a remedy that is also good for the kidney and specifically useful for kidney stones. I used this in tincture form.

Terebinthiniae - this remedy was used for a short period of time because it's great for blood in the urine. Part of the damage that had been done from all of the procedures was that I was peeing blood all the time. This remedy worked like a charm.

That's it. That's all I used to help heal my kidney. It was a long process though...3 years to be exact.

I have had a few kidney stones since that time, but not nearly as frequent as before. It's usually when I've gone a long period of time dehydrated (like after an illness where I didn't drink enough for a few days).

So what do I do now when I know I have a kidney stone?

I reach for 3 remedies...Medorrhinum 200c, Berberis vulgaris mother tincture, and Belladonna 3c. I typically alternate Berberis and Belladonna every 3-5 minutes until the stone is passed and take Medorrhinum once or twice during the entire process.

Belladonna is a great pain remedy. And it also helps to dilate the ureter which makes it easier for the stone to pass. So it's great to alternate with Berberis during an acute kidney stone attack.

So if you've read this far and you struggle with kidney stones too, now you know that I can truly say that I feel for you. I have been in your shoes...multiple times over.

I hope you find some of this information useful for you and it offers you hope that homeopathy has answers for you. You CAN heal or at least find drug-free relief when you are actively passing a stone.

As always, if you choose to use the remedies I've recommended above and don't seem to be having the same success, just know that there are many different homeopathic medicines that could be right for your situation. Please reach out for a consult with me so that we can find what would be the most beneficial for your specific situation.