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I recently had a very large kidney stone and let me tell you... It was bad enough to make me vomit. In cases like this it would be great to be able to self-medi

by Osiris 5y ago

I recently had a very large kidney stone and let me tell you... It was bad enough to make me vomit. In cases like this it would be great to be able to self-medicate the pain. However, I can also see how it could be abused to say "ah, it's not that bad" and not have the problem resolved. In my case, it could lead to permanent kidney damage.

throwanem 5y ago
I had a 5mm stone in late 2018. Even if a therapy based on this research had existed at that time, I doubt anyone would have suggested brain surgery when I presented with an acute abdomen at the ER. Granted I did end up having to have surgery for another stone the following year, but that surgery definitely did not have anything to do with my brain beyond anesthesia. That's not really the end of a human in which urologists specialize, you know? It'd be one thing if I had a pre-existing chronic pain condition for which I'd already had such an implant installed, but even in that case I'd have to have enough access to ongoing care to have someone I could call and say "this hurts in a way that's new." The implant itself would need the same kind of management as does a pacemaker or ICD, I imagine. So it seems not tremendously likely that the scenario you describe would play out in practice. (In any case, I'm good enough at withstanding pain that I waited two full days before deciding it was time to go to the ER, and even at that raised the mild suspicion of the doctor who attended me on the basis of how I wasn't screaming, vomiting, swearing, or otherwise showing much of anything beyond being pale and dehydrated. If it hadn't been for CT results unquestionably showing the calculus, I might've had some trouble with being misidentified as a drug seeker. So I'm not super sure the implant poses much more of a risk for inadvertent self-harm, you know? If I'd been in a worse way than I was, I could well have lost a kidney entirely through sheer stubbornness, no brain implant required.)

by Osiris 5y ago

throwanem 5y ago

I had a 5mm stone in late 2018. Even if a therapy based on this research had existed at that time, I doubt anyone would have suggested brain surgery when I presented with an acute abdomen at the ER. Granted I did end up having to have surgery for another stone the following year, but that surgery definitely did not have anything to do with my brain beyond anesthesia. That's not really the end of a human in which urologists specialize, you know? It'd be one thing if I had a pre-existing chronic pain condition for which I'd already had such an implant installed, but even in that case I'd have to have enough access to ongoing care to have someone I could call and say "this hurts in a way that's new." The implant itself would need the same kind of management as does a pacemaker or ICD, I imagine. So it seems not tremendously likely that the scenario you describe would play out in practice. (In any case, I'm good enough at withstanding pain that I waited two full days before deciding it was time to go to the ER, and even at that raised the mild suspicion of the doctor who attended me on the basis of how I wasn't screaming, vomiting, swearing, or otherwise showing much of anything beyond being pale and dehydrated. If it hadn't been for CT results unquestionably showing the calculus, I might've had some trouble with being misidentified as a drug seeker. So I'm not super sure the implant poses much more of a risk for inadvertent self-harm, you know? If I'd been in a worse way than I was, I could well have lost a kidney entirely through sheer stubbornness, no brain implant required.)