Update on pain that continued after passing stone: surprise 2nd stone

For context: https://www.reddit.com/r/KidneyStones/s/QPPy3YUW0v

The update is that it was a surprise second stone!

After the post, I kept using AZO and either Naproxen or Ibuprofen. I tried to go about my business and wait for my urology consult (which is still more than a week out as I write this). My thought process: I had just been told my urine culture was negative, and I didn’t have any signs of infection. I had passed the only stone I thought I had. (The ER doc had told me I had a 4mm stone, and I had passed a 4mm stone 4 days later.) Pics of that stone in my history. As a first-timer, I thought maybe the reason I was still in pain was that the jagged little 4mm x 2 mm stone had scratched up my urethra.

During the weeks afterward, though, including when I made the linked post asking about pain the persists after passing, I had one day when I needed two doses of heavy pain meds due to a short resumption of pain in my lower back, and many days where I had moderate pain and pressure in my bladder and urethra. A few days ago, I thought, “It’s been 10 days, shouldn’t I be able to stop taking AZO? So I did. But I found I could not stop taking Ibuprofen, and I sometimes regretted not having taken the AZO when I peed and it hurt. 24 hours ago, I had a sharp sudden pain in my urethra, and this AM, I passed this stone, which is actually a little larger than the one I passed two weeks prior.

I guess the mystery of why I was still in pain after passing a stone is solved.

When I think back on my imaging in the ER, I now wonder if it was this second stone they saw in my ureter near the bladder. If the first one had already passed into my bladder at the time of imaging, would they have even been able to see it?

I always found it curious that I had crazy intense urinary pressure at the ER that delayed them even getting me in for imaging until I had received morphine in my IV. I wonder if that could mean that stone 1 had just entered the bladder while I was at the ER awaiting imaging, and stone 2 parked higher up is the only one they saw. Then stone 1 passed 4 days later & I assumed it was the same 4mm stone they had seen at the bottom of the ureter.

The only other thing they saw on imaging was a “punctate” stone still in my kidney. I would not expect that to have grown to 4-5mm and passed since then.

At any rate, I wanted to share my experience in case someone else continues to have pain after passing their first stone.