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I posted about this over on the red board but thought to ask here as well, in case anyone has any fresh insights, or can spell out to me why my case is hopeless.
I was recently diagnosed with four small stones (largest 2.5mm) seen on CT after a US detected a small nonobstructing stone. I have no previous history of stones. I had the full metabolic workup that showed slight hypercalciuria, borderline hyperoxaluria, mildly alkaline urine. Nothing my nephrologist or urologist has told me suggests (to me, anyway) that they are likely to be anything but ordinary calcium oxalate stones, preventable by diet (I'd recently become a nighttime chocaholic and drank lots of chai tea -- no more!). Uro thinks they will pass spontaneously, nephro thinks they probably won't pass anytime in the near future (he can't guarantee that they won't though). Both counseled that I should go with "watchful waiting" even though I asked for lithotripsy because I doubted that I could get recertified with retained stones. I don't have any known underlying kidney disease that would make lithotripsy or extraction unusually risky, I think they're just practicing conservative, HMO-style, cost-cutting medicine.
If it would mean that I could get recertified, I'd be willing to doctor shop to find someone willing to treat the stones in the most expeditious way possible. On the red board Dr. Bruce said that my only hope is if the stones are provably unpassable so the FAA would issue me as is with a letter from the doc. I'm trying to understand this, since dozens of pilots have gotten recertified after passing stones. I understand that mine are too small to be seen on KUB and that just getting KUB cleared for now isn't good enough, but why couldn't I qualify after successful treatment? Maybe I'm reading too much into what wasn't said explicitly but I'm getting the impression that I'll always be held to the standard of completely stone free by CT which is hard to achieve due to the high resolution of modern CT. But that doesn't make sense to me since just about everyone today who has stones is screened by CT at some point, and other people have gotten past this hurdle.
I'm posting unreg since I don't like to share medical details out in the open. Thanks for reading.
I was recently diagnosed with four small stones (largest 2.5mm) seen on CT after a US detected a small nonobstructing stone. I have no previous history of stones. I had the full metabolic workup that showed slight hypercalciuria, borderline hyperoxaluria, mildly alkaline urine. Nothing my nephrologist or urologist has told me suggests (to me, anyway) that they are likely to be anything but ordinary calcium oxalate stones, preventable by diet (I'd recently become a nighttime chocaholic and drank lots of chai tea -- no more!). Uro thinks they will pass spontaneously, nephro thinks they probably won't pass anytime in the near future (he can't guarantee that they won't though). Both counseled that I should go with "watchful waiting" even though I asked for lithotripsy because I doubted that I could get recertified with retained stones. I don't have any known underlying kidney disease that would make lithotripsy or extraction unusually risky, I think they're just practicing conservative, HMO-style, cost-cutting medicine.
If it would mean that I could get recertified, I'd be willing to doctor shop to find someone willing to treat the stones in the most expeditious way possible. On the red board Dr. Bruce said that my only hope is if the stones are provably unpassable so the FAA would issue me as is with a letter from the doc. I'm trying to understand this, since dozens of pilots have gotten recertified after passing stones. I understand that mine are too small to be seen on KUB and that just getting KUB cleared for now isn't good enough, but why couldn't I qualify after successful treatment? Maybe I'm reading too much into what wasn't said explicitly but I'm getting the impression that I'll always be held to the standard of completely stone free by CT which is hard to achieve due to the high resolution of modern CT. But that doesn't make sense to me since just about everyone today who has stones is screened by CT at some point, and other people have gotten past this hurdle.
I'm posting unreg since I don't like to share medical details out in the open. Thanks for reading.