Kidney stones information center

Sufferers of kidney stones know that there are few things on this Earth that can be more painful than the formation and passage of one. But one man learned through personal experience that the medical system can cause as much -- if not more -- mental, emotional, physical and financial suffering as the kidney stones.

If you want to learn more about potential problems that a kidney stones sufferer can face so that you can avoid them, this information is for you.

Chris Mitsoff is sharing his stories of dealing with the pain of both kidney stones and doctors with you on this page in the hope that sufferers like him can avoid some of the problems he experienced, such as potentially lethal prescription combinations, operating room mistakes and conflicting diagnoses and prognoses.

Signs of kidney stones began in early adulthood

Chris was born Dec. 17, 1925 to Macedonian immigrant parents in Cincinnati, Ohio. His family moved to the nearby city of Middletown, where he spent most of his teen years. During that time he pursued his lifetime passion, writing stories, by working as a reporter at the local newspaper, the Middletown Journal. The newspaper editors recognized Chris’s skills and abilities at a young age, and allowed him to cover sporting events for publication even though he was still only a teenager. Following high school graduation, Chris went into the U.S. Army and served in Germany with the 508 Parachute Infantry Regiment. It was after World War II, while he was serving with the 82nd Airborne Division, that he experienced a kidney stone “letting loose.” Examinations by military medical personnel led to the discovery of a large kidney stone, known as a staghorn stone, forming in Chris’s left kidney.

“You don’t forget the first three or four kidney stones attacks you experience,” according to Chris. “First of all, you wonder what it is that is cutting up your insides. As the pain progresses, you wonder if you are going to die.”

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of a lifetime of dealing with kidney problems, which in turn led to other health conditions. Chris was one of the first people in southwest Ohio to be diagnosed with hyperparathyroidism, a disorder of the parathyroid glands. Most people with this disorder have one or more enlarged, overactive parathyroid glands that secrete too much parathyroid hormone. In secondary hyperparathyroidism, a problem such as kidney failure makes the body resistant to the action of parathyroid hormone, and Chris did indeed suffer subsequent kidney failure.

'You'll be dead in three months ...'

A chain reaction of medical conditions had begun, leading to exams, treatments and even several operations. While many of the doctors, nurses and medical staff were wonderfully professional, Chris ran into enough medical practitioners who were wrong to the point of causing physical and emotional pain that he had to share some of his experiences. During one medical consultation, a doctor told Chris, “You are going to die in three months.”

“'You’ll be dead in three months,’ he said again while my wife and I stared at him in great concern and total disbelief,” according to Chris. “’Three months, it’s right here,’ he said, rattling the papers at me. He said many more things about kidneys, and even made faces to describe his statements, and then he left us.” Chris later saw other specialists to follow up on the doctor’s prognosis. It turned out Chris outlived the doctor’s dire pronouncement by several years, but he did get over $1,000 in medical bills for that forecast and subsequent doctor visits.

A later visit to a new renal physician brought some more disconcerting news. The doctor checked Chris’s list of prescribed medications, “and said calmly that two of them, taken together for a length of time would certainly be fatal to my kidney or anybody’s kidneys. She told me to stop taking one of them.”

Chris has dealt with kidney stones pain, the distress of subsequent illnesses and physical problems caused by his kidney malfunction, and the anguish and sometimes horror of a medical system in which the left hand often doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. You can learn about these problems so you can be aware of them before they arise by reading Chris’s book, “The Saga of the Kidney Stone Kid,” available through this Web site in paperback form and also via instant-access e-book (HTML format).