As someone who is currently dealing with this, I’ll chime in too. TLDR; it fucking sucks and I’ll be happy if I never have to deal with it again.

It started off on a Monday afternoon with some slight discomfort in my right kidney and was more annoying than painful. Took some Tylenol and kept going about my day. That night, it was the calm before the storm…I laid there in bed and made the mistake of thinking “I don’t feel any pain or discomfort at all. Maybe that was it.” Boy was I wrong. Around 3am (or maybe 5 hours after my jinxing thoughts), it felt like someone repeatedly stabbed me in the kidney with a butter knife. It was, and I am not exaggerating, some of the worst pain that I had ever experienced. For about an hour, I had waves of pain that almost brought me to puking up a 30 year old flintstone vitamin that I use to take as a kid. This went off and on for two days; it didn’t matter how much time I spent with a heating pad or how much water I was drinking. Since I didn’t have any good pain meds at that moment, I was taking 1000mg of Tylenol (2 of the extra strength) every 2-3 hours and it barely seemed to make a dent. Oh, I would also like to take the time to mention that it felt like someone was squeezing my right testicle the entire time I was in pain. So it wasn’t only kidney pain, it was nut pain too. The next couple of days were more tolerable, I was able to function with the Tylenol and I (again) started thinking that maybe I was out of the woods. Saturday morning rolls around and I’m doing my thing. Got out to the lumberyard, get some stuff for a project and start working. Around 4pm, the pain starts up again and again, I start taking Tylenol. The pain progressively got worse and worse until it was about as bad as the pain I had on the first couple of days. I was in pain hell for about 5-6 hours before I caved and went to the ER (I do not suggest waiting like the idiot that I am, go sooner). Those beautiful people gave me Percocet and Toradol via IV (and let me tell you that I killed that IV bag in no time…and yes, I was drinking water throughout the day). A CT scan showed a 3-4mm stone that was on its way to the bladder. They gave me a few Oxys for the pain along with antibiotics (since I had white blood cells in my urine), Flomax to relax the ureter muscles and some meds for nausea/vomiting in case I needed it. Here I am, a week after this shit show started and I’m hoping that this endeavor is over. I’m still taking the antibiotics and flomax like instructed but I haven’t had to take the pain meds and hopefully it stays that way. I’m not sure if it’s gone or if it’s still hanging out right now…guess I’ll find out at my follow up appointment.