So, of course, I'm like, "Oh, my baby." I don't know this person. I don't even know his name, but I feel for him. Okay.
And imagine, you guys, a lot of you are older listening to this, but, you know, there are young people that get kidney stones. The problem with this is, so, the average person is in their early 40s getting kidney stones, and we do have kids, more and more, getting kidney stones, but they don't tend to seek help. So, I love that this kid is asking, "What do I do here?" Most of us, when they, when we get our first kidney stone, nobody seeks help!
I'm talking to people 50, 60, 70, 80 because now they're like, "Okay, now I'm, I'm getting a lot of them now. Well, and now I have diabetes and everything else. Now, I'm scared." But you younger folk with your one stones, you should learn how to prevent them because, most likely, if you made one, you're going to make, there's a 50% chance you're going to make another.
And if you do make the other, there's a 100% chance you're making more. So, if you make that second one, you're going to be a repeat offender. Typically, every two years, they start coming.
So, when you get a kidney stone, I love that this kid had the fore- foresight to say, "Hey, what should I do?" at 21 years old, because a lot of my 40-year-olds, I'm not talking to them till they're 50, 60. So, good for this kid. All right.
So, the scenario is he's 21, his bladder was hurting, he couldn't pee. Big sign! You got to get your bum to the.
Big sign! If you're having urine blocked, you guys, this is, this is Imagine, poop, pee, this is your body saying, "This ain't good for me. Get it out!" Right?
Urine is all the waste products the kidneys don't want. Filters your blood, has a lot of cock-a-doodle-doos in there. Now, we got to get rid of it.
That's not supposed to be staying in your body. So, he can't pee. So, he took himself to the doctor.
He also saw blood in his urine. The doctor said it was a UTI.. The doctor should have said, or the office should have said, "You got blood in your urine?
We need imaging." Because blood in the urine is a very, I'm going to say it again, it's a very serious thing. Could be, any doctor who sees blood in the urine should be ruling out bladder cancer. It's the first thing.
Doctors typically don't, you know, UTI, maybe, but blood in the urine, it's a holy bejeezus moment. Let's do imaging to rule out bladder cancer. So, you got two things, typically, with blood in the urine.
Typically, kidney stone, kidney stone, and or bladder cancer. So, you always check out hematuria, which means blood in the urine, always. This kid is smart.
So, he went and they said, "Yeah, UTI." Then he goes home, and now he's in pain. He goes back, and they're like, "Could be…" So, he had an X-ray, Jeff? Is that what his, he said?
Okay. Okay. So, the kid's asking, basically, what he should do.
Yes, he should get imaging, first and foremost. It's It's just that important. Lots of times this can be bladder cancer, okay?
It's probably not for him. It's probably a kidney stone, most likely, but you just, like I said, any office is going to want to rule that out. So, yes.
If you have the pain, if you saw blood in the urine, you have to go get imaging to go rule out whatever it is. Okay? So, it sounds like, but we can't, we can't be sure unless we have an X-ray or some kind of imaging, an ultrasound.
It does sound like a kidney stone. The fact that he couldn't pee, but then he could, the pee could have got lodged, and then it unlodged, and now he's able to pee. And, typically, when a stone's going through your system, your ureters, again, the, the kidneys, the ureters are attached to the kidneys, and these ureters are like little straws, little tubes that lead the urine down to the bladder, and then from the bladder, we pee.
We pee everything out. Goes through the urethra, and then we pee. So, the fact that the kid had pain, the fact that it came back, the fact that now he can pee, it sounds like a stone was on its way out.
Could be stuck somewhere else now, who knows? We don't know unless we have imaging. The good thing is he's peeing.
But he will definitely need imaging, for sure. And then, if he does have a kidney stone, the next thing he needs to do is, "Dear Doctor, okay, I got a kidney stone. Is this in a place where I can pee it out?
Is this in a place where we can just watch and see? Is this in a place where I need to get this out right now?" So, there's lots of times people are like, "I have stones in me, but my doctor said they're in a place where we can just wait and see." And so, people will say, "What do you think about that, Jill?" And I'm like, "Surgeons are very good.
This is their job to say 'Wait and see,' 'We got to get it out,' 'It's in a place where it's not going to move,' or 'The likelihood, yes, you can pee that out. It's less than 5 millimeters.'" That doesn't mean, folks, if you have a larger stone you can't pee it out, because I've had many patients tell me, "Oh, I've peed out stones larger than 5 millimeters." That is the average we say where 5 millimeters is usually the cutoff where, you know, you're probably going to need surgery.
But I've definitely had plenty of patients pee out larger stones. Okay, so all of that. So, the surgeons are very good at the probability, or saying what will probably happen.
"We can leave it. We'll watch and see. It's in a place where it's very embedded, or you'll probably pee it out." So, as far as the watch and wait, stones, lots of those are in your lower pole of the kidneys.
And so, they probably will stay there. And so, people get nervous that they have kidney stones in them. And I always say, "Le- Use it as a negative motivator." Meaning, you know they're in there.
You do not want them to grow bigger. So, doing the Kidney Stone Diet will definitely make sure that they don't grow. I have patients from years ago, I'm talking decades ago, where they still write me and say, "I had my annual, Jill.
They haven't grown. The same six stones are there. Still doing the Kidney Stone Diet.
Thank you for everything." And so, if you're hydrating, if you're watching your sodium, if you're getting your calcium, if you're not binging on spinach all the time, if you're, you know, not doing Paleo diet and making sure that you're eating moderate amounts of meat protein, you're doing all the things, not ad- adding, eating too much sugar.
You're doing all the things, and you follow the Kidney Stone Diet, most of the time, those stones won't grow. So, people will say, "Well, I'm nervous because I want those out." My take is, from somebody who's had many surgeries for her cancer stuff, if a doctor tells you don't need a surgery, don't have a surgery, 'cause they're not fun!
So, like I said, the urologist, that is their job. They're very well versed, typically, on when a stone should come out, when it shouldn't come out. Some patients have told me over the years, "Oh, they just want to make, they want us to make stones so they can make money." Urologists don't want you to make stones!
They don't want you to make stones. They're not telling me things on diet, Jill, 'cause they're just going to make money to take them out. They don't know about diets!
That's not what they went to school for, they're surgeons. And most of them are pretty darn good. So, it's not that they are not telling you information so they can make kidney stones, believe me.
There's plenty of people that are not going to adhere to diet changes no matter how many stones they've had. Urologists will always have their patients. They're not looking for more, okay?
They're overworked as it is. So, that's not why they're not telling you about diet. That's not what they do.
They'll ship you off to me, or the or dietitian in their office if they have one, most don't, but some may, or they'll tell you to go on the internet, which is the wild west for kidney stones. So they're very good at telling you when you can, what, what, what you should do for your kidney stone. But this kid was super smart.
He had these things going on. Think about it, folks, most 21-year-olds are not coming to the internet with that question. And so he was very good at saying what was going on with him, what should he do next.
And he should definitely get imaging to rule out kidney stones, and I'm just so grateful that he took all of that very seriously.
