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| in the urinary tract, causing irritation or blockage. The usual symptoms are a sharp, cramping pain in the back and side in the area of the kidney or in the lower abdomen. Sometimes nausea and vomiting occur with this pain. Later, the pain may spread to the groin. Some people (such as myself) only feel deep restlessness with ill-defined abdominal aching. |
| Passing a kidney stone results in what is called referred pain. The pain is not the simple and well-defined distress of a broken finger or topical injury, with local nerve endings in the skin sending distress signals to the spinal cord and up to the brain. Referred pain derives from nerve impulses sent by the autonomic nervous system to the spinal cord nerves of the central nervous system. There are a variety of possible sensations that can occur, ranging from profound agony to an ill-defined distress somewhat similar to menstrual cramps or gas pain. Such referred pain is notoriously difficult to define at first. General abdominal pain in its early stages can derive from kidney stones, an ovarian cyst, appendicitis or under-cooked lentils . . . it all feels the same. Only as the inflammation progresses can one start to define where and what is causing the pain. |
| If the stone is too large to pass easily, the pain continues and becomes more of a lower back and flank phenomenon as the muscles in the wall of the ureters try to squeeze the stone along into the bladder. As a stone grows or moves, blood may be found in the urine. As the stone moves down the ureter closer to the bladder, a person may feel the need to urinate more often or feel a burning sensation during urination. A large stone may lodge briefly at the mouth of the urethra and finally induce sharp, local, "unreferred" pain. |
| For women, the passage out of the body is usually simpler; women tend to have a short and more resilient urethra. Having such a stone lodged midway in the penis of a male is a bit nightmarish. |
| If fever and chills accompany any of these symptoms, |
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