I had a big one lodged in the pipe between my kidney and the bladder, easily the worst pain I've ever experienced (the broken arm was a breeze next to this). It started when I got up in the night with severe abdominal cramps - thinking it was IBS (which I have) took some pills hoping it would ease off, but it got steadily worse, sweating, lots of vomiting & retching when there was nothing left to throw up, ended up at 5am in A&E, had intramuscular morphine but this did nothing to ease the pain, had to wait for doctors to start so I could get it intravenously (ahhh...). Some scans later and they said I'd need a drain putting in before they could zap the stone, as the blockage was causing a fluid buildup and swelling in the kidney which needed to be diverted away. I had to lie on my front on the operating table while a fuzzy ultrasound display was being used to work out where to shove a giant needle into my kidney through my back - after a couple of attempts they had to get a surgeon in to do it - I couldn't believe they were doing this to me while awake! This was definitely a painful procedure, and it left me with a tube coming out of my back which drained into a bag that would be strapped to my leg that had to be emptied regularly.
A few days later and I was going in for the op - a laser would be inserted through my urinary tract, through the bladder and into the blocked pipe where it would blast the stone to smithereens. Fortunately this is done under general anaesthetic, but you do suffer for it once you come round and it wears off - the amount of internal trauma caused is borne out by huge gungy lumps of blood that you pass, seemingly forever. The idea was that after the removal of the stone, with the pipe clear I could then have the drain removed and be on my way, but unfortunately the trauma was such that the pipe was blocked by inflammation which would take a few days to settle down, so they had to go in again (same way!) and put a stent in the pipe, which would enable the kidney to drain properly in the bladder. This meant that I could at least have the drain taken out and be on my way, returning in a couple of weeks to have the stent removed.
Having a stent in your kidney is not pleasant, mainly because you get no real notice of having to go the toilet - it comes on suddenly and you are instantly desparate to go, so a toilet must always be nearby. And then there's the pain when you do find the toilet - it hurts, a lot - and there's no feeling of completion either, just a dull ache. You only know that you're done once the drips stop.
After a couple of weeks of this the time came to have my stent out, I was told it would be an outpatient appointment and would take all of 20 minutes. Of course, this meant no general anaesthetic - I would be awake this time when they shoved a scary-looking thing down my chap (whatever you do, don't make my mistake of googling 'cystoscope'...). What this involved was, in some ways, more uncomfortable than the kidney stone itself, involving a gaggle of nurses around you (they would have to be all female wouldn't they...), one of which lubricated the tip - the urge to avoid eye contact is all-consuming, let me tell you. Then the torture began, the cystoscope was inserted and pushed into the bladder, which was then inflated with warm water, so you get the constant urge to 'go' which you are constantly fighting seemingly to no avail - it's like you are on your back doing the biggest slash of your life while surrounded by nurses. The doctor in charge, who was operating the cystoscope, looks intently through the eyepiece, trying to locate the end of the stent with some kind of grabber that can then pull it out, the same way it went in. Once located, it is whipped out (for want of a better expression) and it is over - off to the loo for the first semi-normal visit to the toilet in weeks, I say semi-normal as it is just a bladderful of warm water after all.
On the whole, not an experience I'd recommend
Been there,done that ,You will need morphine based pain killers ,strongest they will give you.
as if 
. Then he had to enter the bladder by forcing through the sphincter, “the muscle that closes the bladder”, I didn’t see anything else, my eyes where closed in a grimace of pain. The stent, grabber and camera were then pulled out, reversing the procedure.
well it's made me cringe.
