"Buffering" your medicines post op: UrocitK for kidney stones

I am taking the generic and they want me to take 3, 3x a day.  I die, I tell you.... I die if I take it three times a day so I am trying to figure out how to take one 3 pill dose a day before I add any more.

Will look on my bottle and post the dosage when I get home.  All I know is my kidneys hurt right now and I am afraid of what is coming.  

My little speck in one kidney grew to a 10 in four months.  It has been four months since my surgery to blast the stones and I am afraid of what is in there.  I KNOW I have not taken the meds like I should, I KNOW I am asking for trouble, but I have to live and can not live with horrible attacks of lava poos at school.

And yes, I do drink lactaid or soy milk on occasion.  I have also figured out that my carrot/apple juice causes some issues too, so I have cut down on that as well. 

Good grief Charlie Brown!

A couple of things:

1--when was your last 24-hour urine collection?
2--didja know that there IS no generic for the 15MeQ tablets, so I have to get an Rx and my insurance has to pay?  (Just a little suggestion.)

There is no real "generic" UrocitK, but they will try and give some sort of potassium citrate. This has been an issue between me and my insurance company.

The thing is, if you take the equivalent of the UrocitK, you have to take 3 large potassium pills for the equivalent of each 15meq Urocit K tablet, so if you need 4 UrocitK per day, you have to take 16 of the other potassium citrate pills!

Not only that, but those no-name potassium pills gave me horrid poop. Now I'm wondering if you will do better on actual UrocitK. If you're insurance is as snickety as mine, they will say that you can take the cheaper generic (even though it technically isn't) and say you need to take those 12-16 pills a day for them to cover it. 

The actual UrocitK is making a dent in my citrate levels (not enough, so I'm going to have to take more) so I have to suck it up and pay $175 month for that stuff - and that IS the copay, I guess it's more if I had to pay full price. Shee**** is potassium after all.

I was bumped from 3 to 6 of the UrocitK pills per day, so that means I'd have to take 24 of the cheaper potassium pills the insurance wants me to take, and that is just not reasonable. I don't have time to mess with all of those, not to mention my guts and butt can't take that kind of abuse. I'm still fighting my insurance on this one.

Mine is the 1080 dose too.  They want me to take 9 pills a day. 

Will call my pharmacy and see if they can do the non-generic and try that. 

I have a 24hr collection kit ready to use, but have not done it because I have not been taking the medicine.  Figured it would not go up if I havent taken the stuff to make it go up... right?  Will probably do it Thanksgiving week if I can get some pills in me.

Nice to know there is hope in the non-generic.   Now to get the insurance to pay for it!

You don't want an artificially elevated (as in the one week you take pills) number, but...are you seeing a urologist and have you EVER had a 24-hour urine collection?  Because there is no point in all this suffering if all you are doing is guessing.

BTW, mine is not the 1080mg...it is the 15MeQ, which is 1.5 times that much (1620mg.)  And since the pills can't be cut, the only way to get the drug in that dosage is in the Rx version.

Oh, and I progressed from the smash-o-rama (lithotripsy) machine to this, except they went all the way into the kidney to get stones.  They didn't get them all, only 15 or so.  There are a couple that still show on a recent scan of the area.  (BTW, they used some kind of date rape drug...so I have no idea what happened.)

15 individual stones that are not leftover from smashing??

It's none of my business, but are they sure you don't have medulary sponge kidney? It doesn't show up on regular x-ray, but multiple stone formation is often the first clue.

I need to follow your kidney stone posts, we seem to be on the same ****** up journey with those.

Sorry for late reply.  My computer has been testy lately and not wanting to let me reply. I have now invested 204.00 in a bottle of the real stuff so that I can see if it will work better than the generic.  If not, I am out some money, but if so, I can  avoid stones.  After I meet my deductible it will be an 80/20 split, so around 50.-00 a month.  I plan on starting tomorrow to see if the "reprocussions" kick in.  If so it will be over the weekend and I can get back to normal before Monday.