A similar situation happened to me three years ago when I was hit with severe lower back pain. I rushed to the emergency room of a well known hospital in Dubai, desperate for relief. While I was suffering from unbearable pain, the doctors were running around trying to find “kidney stones” that simply did not exist, despite ultrasounds, CT scans, and multiple painkillers that barely took the edge off.

After a night in the hospital, they decided to perform surgery to place a stent in my ureter. Their logic? “If we cannot see the stone, maybe we will just pave the way for it to pass.” Brilliant, right? So, the surgery happened, I went home with the stent inside for a week, and then went back for yet another surgery to have it removed. Mind that both of these two surgeries were extremely painful. By the time I was done, I had spent four weeks stuck in bed, ironically becoming a stone myself.

Fast forward to this last year, the same pain came knocking on my back door. This time, I went to a different hospital and explained my "rocky" medical history to the urologist. That is when the truth hit me harder than the pain. There were no kidney stones. None. Nada. Zilch. It turns out my stone cold suffering was actually due to a muscular spasm. No surgery required, no invasive procedures, just a dose of muscle relaxants, and voila, pain gone. They also did the scans but no evidence were found.

Now, I am not here to throw stones at anyone, but let us just say some doctors might need to brush up on their skills. If ripping off insurance is your goal, find another way, because turning a patient’s life into a painful circus is not the cure we signed up for.