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Don't let doctors cause you more pain than your kidney stones!

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 stones.

If you want to learn more about potential problems that a kidney stone 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 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 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 stone 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 stone 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).

What readers are saying

"A delightful story. I congratulate you on this effort."
-- Dr. Denton A. Cooley, world famous heart surgeon from the Texas Heart Institute, who performed open-heart surgery on the author in 1974.

"I received the book, and read the whole thing in one day. I really enjoyed it. I don't have near as many problems as Chris did, ... but I had lot of the same experiences with doctors & hospitals."
-- Susan Miller, Norristown, PA

"Thank you. I have received your book and read it thoroughly already. Thank you for sharing your experiences! Seems we're not alone in this ongoing war against the dreaded stones, and for that, I appreciated your story."
-- Ann Pendell, Bay City, MI

You can learn what the danger signs are!

Doesn’t it make sense to avoid trouble by learning through the experiences of someone else? If you answered yes, here are three easy ways to order:

1) You can use your credit card to order the instant download e-book, or the paperback version (free shipping!), for $12.97.

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click here to order the paperback via secure server. Paperback copies are mailed USPS the day after the order is received.

Ordering the e-book by credit card will allow you access within minutes. After your order is confirmed through our secure server, you will be directed to a page with your access code, and you'll be reading almost immediately!

2) You can send a check or money order for $12.97 to:

         Mitsoff Publishing
         3123 Village Court
         Beavercreek, OH 45432

Be sure to indicate whether you are ordering the paperback or the e-book, and be sure to include both your postal address and your e-mail address so we can contact you with the status of your order. If you order the e-book via check or money order, your access code will be sent to you by e-mail for immediate access.

3) Click here to send us an e-mail with your name and phone number so we can call you with ordering options.

Don’t wait! What you don’t know about kidney stones and the physicians who treat them can hurt you!

New study demonstrates that bone protein can reverse kidney failure

BOSTON – A new study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has shown that a protein used to heal fractured bones is effective in repairing and reversing chronic renal disease, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the U.S.

These findings, which are reported in the July 2003 issue of Nature Medicine, could help lead to the development of a therapeutic alternative for the nearly 300,000 kidney disease patients who are currently undergoing dialysis.

"Dialysis is not really a treatment, it's just a means of survival until an opportunity for a transplant opens up," notes the study's senior author Raghu Kalluri, Ph.D., director of the Center for Matrix Biology at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "This is a very tedious way of living life," he adds, explaining that the process of mechanically filtering blood through a machine to remove waste products must be performed several times a week for a period of three to four hours per visit, posing risks of infection and other side effects. Furthermore, the procedure is extremely costly.

The kidneys function as a filtration system, keeping the body's blood supply healthy by removing excess fluids and wastes, as well as by producing hormones. When kidneys "fail" – as can result from complications associated with diabetes, lupus or several other diseases – harmful wastes accumulate in the bloodstream, excess fluids build up in the body, and red blood cell production is impeded. Once chronic kidney disease develops, it cannot be reversed or repaired; when the organs cease to function, patients have no alternative but to undergo dialysis while awaiting a kidney transplant.

This new study looked at the role of a molecule called bone morphogenic protein (BMP)- 7 which, in its recombinant form, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of bone fractures. Earlier studies had revealed that BMP-7 is highly expressed in the kidneys of healthy individuals. "We wanted to learn if this protein was somehow offering protection against kidney injury," explains Kalluri.

The investigators used mouse models of chronic renal injury, characterized by the presence of scar tissue known as renal fibrosis; once kidney disease was well-established in the animals, they administered human recombinant BMP-7.

"We found that in the kidneys, BMP-7 reverses a process known as epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, which generates scar-causing cells known as fibroblasts," says Kalluri, explaining that BMP-7 first reduces the number of the fibroblast cells, and then replaces the damaged areas of the kidney tubules with healthy epithelial cells. "In effect," he adds, "BMP-7 is decreasing the bad cells [in this context, fibroblasts] and converting them into good cells [in this context, epithelial cells]."

Although therapies exist to slow progression of kidney disease, once it has developed it becomes intractable, eventually leaving patients no alternative but to undergo dialysis. "The possibility of creating a cost-effective drug that would actually reverse renal injury could significantly reduce the need for dialysis and significantly improve the quality of life for these patients," says Kalluri.

###

Study co-authors include BIDMC investigators Michael Zeisberg, M.D., Jun-ichi Hanai, M.D., Hikaru Sugimoto, M.D., Ph.D., Tadanori Mammoto, Ph.D., David Charytan, M.D., and Frank Strutz, M.D.

This study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and support from the Center for Matrix Biology, BIDMC. Ortho Biotech Products, L.P., is the exclusive licensee of BMP-7.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a major patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox.

Source: EurekAlert.org

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Last update: February 5,2006