Hello there. I'm a 38 year old male. About a year ago, I passed a kidney stone. It was the first one I had ever experienced. I woke up one day with pain, which subsided within 48 hours, and about 2 months later I popped out a stone. In the weeks and days before the stone finally passed, I experienced a lot of discomfort with urination and frequent/urgent urination. After passing the stone, I felt 100% normal (after a brief recovery period). I had a CT scan done at the time and I had no other stones that they could see.
Fast forward to about 8 months later. One night, I woke up to use the bathroom, but after I urinated, I had this feeling like I still had more urine in me, and that I still needed to go. It was very similar to when I was passing a kidney stone months earlier. This persisted for several days and subsided a little, but it has not gone away completely. For the past 2 months these symptoms seem to flare up for a while and then they go back down again. This feeling that my bladder is not empty, that I need to go urinate right after I've gone, is very annoying and keeps me up at night. Sometimes, it doesn't feel exactly like needing to urinate, but feels like a slight irritation that seems to be either in my bladder or my urethra, sometimes one or the other and sometimes both.
The feeling is often very mild, yet still noticeable. Sometimes it is mild enough to make me think I might be psyching myself out, and magnifying ordinary sensations. But I'm pretty sure I didn't just wake up that first night imagining physical sensations, and I am fairly certain that it's not just my imagination when it is more moderate. I mean it feels like I need to go, and I don't.
So far I've seen the urologist again once. They found nothing wrong with my urine and they found nothing in ultrasounds of my bladder and kidneys. The urologist said to come back if my symptoms didn't go away. I have another appointment on the books but it takes a while to get in. I'm worried that they won't be able to help me. At first I thought maybe I was passing another stone, but it's been almost 10 weeks now and things have not progressed. So now I'm not so sure that's it. The sensations nearly go away at times. Actually over the past 2 weeks I thought maybe this was clearing up -- but then in the past 3 days it's gotten worse again. I've tried keeping a food diary, but it's hard to find any correlation. I've had it come on days when I've had no caffeine, and I've had caffeine on other days and those have turned out to be better days. Same with spicy food and pretty much anything else. The thing is--I NEVER had any sensitivity issues in the past, why should it just suddenly start up out of the blue one day and persist? What exactly happened on that day? This is what makes me suspect a kidney stone again, but-- there's been no pain, no visible blood in the urine, and it doesn't quite feel the same as the last time... only the slight irritation.
Sexual function remains normal and does not seem to affect it. If anything, it is a little distraction from feeling like I need to go to the bathroom.
Anyway, I really want some relief from this. I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experienced this or something similar and if you have found anything that helps at least suppress the irritation. If nothing else, writing this post has helped me figure out how to better describe my symptoms to my urologist. I will follow up after I've seen my urologist again.