So last October, over Fall Break, I woke up to a kidney stone attack. I later found out the first of November that I actually had 3 stones in my system. I passed the one that landed me in the ER over break and it was estimated to be 3 mm at the time. The lab techs suspected it was probably 5 mm when it left the kidney. Let me explain what that means to anyone who doesn't know much about kidney stones.

A stone the size of 1 to 2 mm is most of the time passable and just painful. A stone 3 mm is half the size of a regular pinky finger tip and is 50/50 in passing rate. 4 mm and up in size are impassable and usually require surgery. If you do pass them, they tear you up horribly and no meds on this planet can dull the pain except for torodal, which they cannot perscribe you due to it being a level 1 drug on the narcotic charts.

So I had to do a 24 collection test to see why I am producing stones when my levels at the time of my ER trip were fine. Turns out I have too much acid in the urine and not enough output. Plus, my sodium is 2 times the level it needs to be and my citric acid level is 25. It is 25 when it should be above 550 for my age. Talk about non-existant.

As of today I am required to drink a minimum of 64 oz of water a day and keep a sodium consumption log. I have to reduce my sodium intact to 1500 mg (milligrams) or lower. Until dinner, I was about half of the maximum allowed but then one serving of ham just broke that. 1020 mg of sodium in one serving of ham. Come on.

I have managed to keep the weight off by eating a lot of protein and lowering my carb intake, as well as the regular exercise cycle. Now I have to limit my protein intake to items with low sodium counts and ham is a big no no. Great. Just peachy. Can't eat the carbs to keep weight of and can't eat ham to keep from producing more kidney stones.

Doctor said 4 things cause kidney stones due to water retention. High sodium intake, tanning, regular exercise, and low citric intake/water. Let's see, not giving up the tanning or the daily exercise. I just have to bulk up on orange juice/citrus and lower the sodium intake while jacking up the water intake. When times like this happens, I wish I hadn't avoided certain crashes or walked away from the last major crash. This is so not the way to enjoy life, at least not when it requires such drastic changes to your daily lifestyle so quickly.