Worried about upcoming surgery
First some background:
I (40m) have had kidney stone issues since I was in college. After passing a few stones I had shockwave lithotripsy done about 15 years ago. It went really well and I had no issues for about 10 years. More stones showed up and grew slowly over that time and in May 2022 I decided to do another round of shockwave lithotripsy to remove a stone or two that were about 5mm. This time recovery was much harder. I constantly felt like I had to pee and had a lot of pain while the fragments passed. It took about a month for things to calm down with the help of some muscle relaxers. I hoped that things would be good for a while....
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago, and I had to have a CT scan to check on my reflux. Turns out my 2nd nissen mostly failed and hiatal hernia is back :/. Anyways, that CT showed multiple stones with the largest up to 8mm. I met with Urology yesterday and we discussed what to do about it. My suspicion was that even though shockwave lithotripsy broke up the larger stones, it likely didn't get all of them and maybe all the fragments didn't pass. Those remaining stones are the ones growing currently. Urology thought that could be possible so we discussed doing the laser lithotripsy procedure instead. The main advantage I think here is that they can actually remove all the stones as part of the procedure so I don't have to worry about not passing them. They mentioned they were going to do a slightly longer 90 minute surgery to make sure to flush all of them out.
My worry:
Everything about this procedure sounds amazing except for the stent. They mentioned using a string and it being removed after 7 days in the office. I've never had a ureter stent before so I made the mistake of looking up people's opinions of them. Big mistake. All I can find are people saying it hurts worse than passing stones. I'm now terrified. I woke up almost every 20 minutes last night with nightmares about the procedure and possible pain. On one hand the scheduler thought I could return to work the day after surgery, but I can't stop worrying. My rational brain says it only sounds bad because people who have good experiences don't post about it so I'm only seeing the small percentage of bad cases. My OCD brain (diagnosed OCD) can't stop catastrophizing.
You guys have any good stories about the URS/LL (laser lithotripsy) procedure where it wasn't that bad? Maybe I should ask for the version without the string to avoid the extra irritation? Just looking for some reassurance that it'll be ok.
Edit: I forgot to mention that they analyzed the stone fragments after the 2nd shockwave procedure and they were 20% calcium oxalate and 80% calcium phosphate