What Kidney Stone Pain Feels Like — and Where You’ll Feel It
Not all kidney stone pain is the same. For example, the location of pain can change as the stone moves from the kidney to the bladder, says Lieske. When a stone is moving into the ureter, people may feel pain in their side or their back, he says.
Notably, if the stone gets stuck where the kidney connects to the ureter, the pain can be severe, says Ralph V. Clayman, MD, a urologist with UCI Health in Orange, California. On a scale of 1 to 10, “pain can be a 10,” he says. “There is no position in which the person is comfortable.”
This type of pain has a tendency to come and go in 10- to 30-minute cycles. It can also radiate to the groin area and the front of the thigh, he adds.
Once the stone has moved down to the part of the ureter closer to the bladder, a person tends to have pain in the abdomen or groin, says Lieske. Men sometimes feel pain at the tip of their penis.
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As the stone moves down the ureter, it can also mimic the pain of other conditions, says Dr. Clayman. For example, if the kidney stone is on the right side of the body, it may feel like appendicitis, or inflammation of the appendix. If the stone is on the left side, people may mistake the pain for diverticulitis, inflammation, or an infection within the small or large intestine, he says.
And as the kidney stone migrates into the bladder, symptoms can be similar to a urinary tract infection, says Clayman. People may experience painful urination along with frequent urination and the urgent need to urinate, he says.
Fortunately, from this point, the stone can usually pass from the bladder out the urethra, which is typically twice the diameter of the ureter, says Clayman.
