I had lithotripsy 12 years ago. I had a big honker of a stone and it was too big to pass. The first litho session didn't even put a dent into it. The next session two weeks later broke it into five pieces, all too big to pass. Finally, the 3rd litho session, two weeks after that, pulverized it.
The second litho left a pretty good sized bruise on my back, but I didn't have any problems with the other two. The most annoying part of it was the stent from my bladder to the kidney that felt like having a bladder infection. The stents were in for a total of six weeks and the last one was not at all enjoyable to have removed.
They give you a light anesthesia. I woke up a couple of times and then went back to sleep again. Sometimes, you get the litho while in a tank of warm water. I was just lying on some kind of water-filled pad. I've spoken to people who were awake for the procedure and they said there was nothing more than a little discomfort but that the noise was pretty annoying. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Then you will have to catch and strain your urine for a while. They analyze the stone fragments to see what kind of stones you have so that they can help you not have a stone again.
My poor father was absolutely plagued with kidney stones for years. This was before lithotripsy and you don't even WANT to know what they had to do to get the stones out, the ones he couldn't pass naturally. Then when lithotripsy came along, he couldn't have it because of his artificial heart valves.
I have read that there is a school of thought that say having lithotripsy can put you at a higher possibility of heart problems. I asked my cardiologist about that and he said it hadn't really been established yet whether that was a verifiable problem or not.
As I said, that was 12 years ago and the process could have improved greatly since then. Also, my husband died between two of my sessions, so I was less emotionally stable at the time.
