Kidney Stones

SkyHog

SkyHog

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Everything Offends Me
yep...just passed one, two more to go, hopefully this weekend. most painful thing I have experienced to date.

what effect will this have on my class 3 medical?
 
Catch them! Do not lose them! Have them analyzed.

If all the stones pass AND you catch them then it's not too big of an issue, basically a letter from the urologist stating they all passed, were caught, and you've been counseled as to dietary changes.

If you fail to catch them or if you fail to pass all of them things get more complicated.
 
jesse said:
Catch them! Do not lose them! Have them analyzed.

If all the stones pass AND you catch them then it's not too big of an issue, basically a letter from the urologist stating they all passed, were caught, and you've been counseled as to dietary changes.

If you fail to catch them or if you fail to pass all of them things get more complicated.
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Luckily, I just caught the first one. Totally not what I thought it would look like. ER Doc gave me a strainer to catch them. Funny enough - passing it out all the way was much less painful than i thought it would be, but passing from the kidney to the bladder made me scream like a little girl.
 
SkyHog said:
yep...just passed one, two more to go, hopefully this weekend. most painful thing I have experienced to date.

what effect will this have on my class 3 medical?
Click to expand...


I got my one and only KS the day after my PP checkride. Perfect timing - 24 hours made a huge difference!

Catch the stones and save them - pee through a strainer or coffe filter (slowly!!!). The lab can determine the type and that will make a difference in your class-III.

I'll let an AME give you the expert opinion - but I think the way it works is that you are grounded until you and your urologist say it's OK to fly. To renew your medical, you will need a report from the urologist that describes the composition of the stones, what you are doing to prevent it from happening again (different compositions have different diets, ...), and you will need at the least a KUB x-ray that shows there are no more stones.
 
SkyHog said:
Luckily, I just caught the first one. Totally not what I thought it would look like. ER Doc gave me a strainer to catch them. Funny enough - passing it out all the way was much less painful than i thought it would be, but passing from the kidney to the bladder made me scream like a little girl.
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Yeah - a little chunk of gravel or a piece of broken glass squeezing through the plumbing from kidney to bladder has a much smaller diameter to work through than from the bladder to the outside world.
 
Loose weight, plenty of exercise, and drink lots and lots of fluid. I drink at least 50 oz of fluid a day. I live in fear of kidney stones, they run in my family. I have heard them described as the single most painful thing that can happen to a man. I've heard big, buff, grown macho men scream like little girls because of them. The second most painful is gout, and I've been there done that. It would be just my luck to suffer a painful illness that knocks me out of the sky. I suspect I would fare far worse than you.

Good luck, I hope you have a speedy and successful recovery.
 
SkyHog said:
Luckily, I just caught the first one. Totally not what I thought it would look like. ER Doc gave me a strainer to catch them. Funny enough - passing it out all the way was much less painful than i thought it would be, but passing from the kidney to the bladder made me scream like a little girl.
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Get better. Sorry you are in pain.
 
steingar said:
I've heard big, buff, grown macho men scream like little girls because of them.
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I went to the ER at oh-dark-thirty with mine. The nurse asked me to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10. I had my jaws clenched, sweating, breathing hard, and couldn't say a word. She said, "I'll take that as a 10".
 
SkyHog said:
Luckily, I just caught the first one. Totally not what I thought it would look like. ER Doc gave me a strainer to catch them. Funny enough - passing it out all the way was much less painful than i thought it would be, but passing from the kidney to the bladder made me scream like a little girl.
Click to expand...

Exactly the same with me. Never having had one, I though the most painful part would be when it passes through the penis, but I didn't even feel that at all. It's the trip from the kidney to the bladder that puts you down.
 
Man alive... Something that Nick calls "painful" must be really special... I a bad way!

Here's hoping for a speedy resolution of the remainder, and no more at all.
 
You need to be very careful on what care you get as a result. I had quite an ordeal with one simple stone. A urologist will want you to have a CATScan but I would highly advise against it. As others have said you will want to have the stone analyzed and then have a KUB X-ray done. If that shows that you are "Stone Free" and if the stone type is an Oxalate based stone which would show up on the KUB then you send in both reports along with a letter from your Dr. saying you are "Stone Free" and that you have been counseled on proper diet to avoid stones to the FAA. Then you wait, and wait, and wait. Hopefully you get a letter back saying that they have received your report and that there are no restrictions on your medical and if you are to ever have another stone then you must report immediately.

The risk you have with the CATScan is that it is much more sensitive. My urologist saw some very small particles that could be stones but then he said they were too small to treat. When I explained that I needed to be "stone free" he didn't seem to care and said there was nothing he could do for them. It turned into quite a Catch-22. If you do have certain embedded stones you can get an SI but I don't know the process. My suggestion is to talk with Dr. Bruce. He was very helpful with my situation and even helped prod the process along to get me my letter.
 
Not trying to steal the thread, but a fellow pilot underwent a hemorroidectomy. He went to Canada to have it done so it would not be recorded in the US. He said it is a disqualifying condition. Is this true?
 
Unregistered said:
Not trying to steal the thread, but a fellow pilot underwent a hemorroidectomy. He went to Canada to have it done so it would not be recorded in the US. He said it is a disqualifying condition. Is this true?
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5 Million ways to lie.

Only one truth.

(Hemmoroids are irrelevant to flight safety).
 
Unregistered said:
Not trying to steal the thread, but a fellow pilot underwent a hemorroidectomy. He went to Canada to have it done so it would not be recorded in the US. He said it is a disqualifying condition. Is this true?
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That HIMS guy just won't go away, will he?
 
bbchien said:
Nick, on what radiologic basis do you know you have three? CT or a KUB?
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I had a CT scan done.

So far, one has passed out, and I am now in the process of passing another one into my bladder. This is one crappy weekend.
 
Okay.

Here's the advice:

I'd get a KUB ("Kidney-upright-bladder Xray), just in case the 3rd one doesn't pass.
Then if after 90 it still has not passed, get another KUB.

Then you can be certified with the stone in situ (having demonstrated 90 days' stability). That's a year by year SI until the KUB show "all gone".

If it does pass, then you need the KUB to demonstrate that it actually was all 3, not 3 parts of 2 of them, so that there is proof that you have no more. That situation is a normal issuance.

Most guys who pass a stone have experienced the man-equivalent of delivery of a child. My condolences....
 
I went from zero to OH MY GOD in about five minutes time. It was the worst pain that I've ever felt in my life. Within about 45 minutes from the start of the symptoms I was in the ER and had morphine in my system. That sure helped. Luckily my CT scan only showed one and I passed it and caught it. Normal issuance for me.

I now drink about five times the amount of water that I did then (and almost zero soda).
 
My SI conditions I understand. But what about kidney stones causes the red flags for the FAA?
 
bbchien said:
Most guys who pass a stone have experienced the man-equivalent of delivery of a child. My condolences....
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A woman I know gave another opinion on it.

She had given birth to three children - all 100% natural deliveries with no pain kills.

According to her, when she got kidney stones, it was worse. Much worse.
 
AggieMike88 said:
My SI conditions I understand. But what about kidney stones causes the red flags for the FAA?
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FAA doesn't like "sudden incapacitation".

A KS can drop you to your knees in big hurry - so an unpassed KS needs to be shown that it is in such a condition it won't move.
 
bbchien said:
Most guys who pass a stone have experienced the man-equivalent of delivery of a child. My condolences....
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It was the one time the Canadian health care system was at all efficient. Went into the ER in, well, significant pain. Normally at the ER in Calgary, that means 6-8 hours in the waiting room, then they'll take you to a bed where you'll wait 3-5 hours before you see a doctor. And that's when they're quiet...it can take significantly longer on a busy night.

Well, the nurse doing the triage recognized what was happening. 10 minutes later they called me in, the doc walked me to the bed and wrote an order for morphine on my chart immediately.
 
USS Triton, on her submerged voyage around the world, actually had to poke her "conning tower" above water (hull still immersed - still legally submerged) to transfer a sailor ill with kidney stones to a waiting cruiser. Reading this thread makes it easy to see why.
 
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So here's the update:

I have successfully passed one stone. The other two are still in my kidney. I keep having pain as if I am going to pass another one, but the pain is short lived and not as intense as the one I passed, so I know its not "ready" to go yet.

I talked to my Urologist yesterday, and as soon as I told him I was a pilot, he immediately changed tune from "you'll be fine" to a more serious "we need to figure this out." Which I like...apparently, he has a lot of experience with pilots. Good news.

Bad news: He can't do a KUB because the stones are too small. Unfortunately, because the other two have not passed, and they are confirmed via CT scan, I need to wait until they pass....although he offered another suggestion of him putting me out, and him physically removing the stones. No thank you.

He is going to do a 24 hour urine scan, where I save all of my pee in a jar for 24 hours and they do some analysis of it. Additionally, he took the one stone I have passed and is going to do some analysis of the make up of it to determine what it is made of and what likely caused it.

But - my understanding is that I am grounded now until I pass those two stones, right? The urologist said that may be a few days, or it could be a few years.
 
Hmm... one of my partners had stones, and they did a procedure of blasting them to bits with sound... lithotripsy. Don't know if you're a candidate.
 
TMetzinger said:
Hmm... one of my partners had stones, and they did a procedure of blasting them to bits with sound... lithotripsy. Don't know if you're a candidate.
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Unfortunately, I am not, because of the size of the stones, or so I've been told.
 
SkyHog said:
So here's the update:

I have successfully passed one stone. The other two are still in my kidney. I keep having pain as if I am going to pass another one, but the pain is short lived and not as intense as the one I passed, so I know its not "ready" to go yet.

I talked to my Urologist yesterday, and as soon as I told him I was a pilot, he immediately changed tune from "you'll be fine" to a more serious "we need to figure this out." Which I like...apparently, he has a lot of experience with pilots. Good news.

Bad news: He can't do a KUB because the stones are too small. Unfortunately, because the other two have not passed, and they are confirmed via CT scan, I need to wait until they pass....although he offered another suggestion of him putting me out, and him physically removing the stones. No thank you.

He is going to do a 24 hour urine scan, where I save all of my pee in a jar for 24 hours and they do some analysis of it. Additionally, he took the one stone I have passed and is going to do some analysis of the make up of it to determine what it is made of and what likely caused it.

But - my understanding is that I am grounded now until I pass those two stones, right? The urologist said that may be a few days, or it could be a few years.
Click to expand...
If they remain in the same area and don't move for 90 days and are small you can get a SI. I think they have to be less than 2 or 3mm but don't know the values for sure. Then I think you CT every year to confirm they still aren't moving or something. It's best to just get them out.
 
SkyHog said:
So here's the update:

I have successfully passed one stone. The other two are still in my kidney. I keep having pain as if I am going to pass another one, but the pain is short lived and not as intense as the one I passed, so I know its not "ready" to go yet.

I talked to my Urologist yesterday, and as soon as I told him I was a pilot, he immediately changed tune from "you'll be fine" to a more serious "we need to figure this out." Which I like...apparently, he has a lot of experience with pilots. Good news.

Bad news: He can't do a KUB because the stones are too small. Unfortunately, because the other two have not passed, and they are confirmed via CT scan, I need to wait until they pass....although he offered another suggestion of him putting me out, and him physically removing the stones. No thank you.

He is going to do a 24 hour urine scan, where I save all of my pee in a jar for 24 hours and they do some analysis of it. Additionally, he took the one stone I have passed and is going to do some analysis of the make up of it to determine what it is made of and what likely caused it.

But - my understanding is that I am grounded now until I pass those two stones, right? The urologist said that may be a few days, or it could be a few years.
Click to expand...


Par-tay par-tay!!! :rollercoaster:

The get it with a grabber while you are under is no big deal.

My urologist told me he had put in a stent while I was out. Getting it back out was the entertaining part... ("It just takes a moment, no need for any anesthesia")

But, yea, sit it out on the ground.

Drink lots of water.

Lots.
 
SkyHog said:
So here's the update:

I have successfully passed one stone. The other two are still in my kidney. I keep having pain as if I am going to pass another one, but the pain is short lived and not as intense as the one I passed, so I know its not "ready" to go yet.

I talked to my Urologist yesterday, and as soon as I told him I was a pilot, he immediately changed tune from "you'll be fine" to a more serious "we need to figure this out." Which I like...apparently, he has a lot of experience with pilots. Good news.

Bad news: He can't do a KUB because the stones are too small. Unfortunately, because the other two have not passed, and they are confirmed via CT scan, I need to wait until they pass....although he offered another suggestion of him putting me out, and him physically removing the stones. No thank you.

He is going to do a 24 hour urine scan, where I save all of my pee in a jar for 24 hours and they do some analysis of it. Additionally, he took the one stone I have passed and is going to do some analysis of the make up of it to determine what it is made of and what likely caused it.

But - my understanding is that I am grounded now until I pass those two stones, right? The urologist said that may be a few days, or it could be a few years.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are grounded for now pending passage of the stone or 90 day follow up and a SI.

It sucks, doesn't it? I wasn't grounded for long (just a few days) but it felt weird knowing that I couldn't fly...even if I wanted to. Lifestyle changes commenced. That was over 40 pounds ago.
 
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