AURORA, Colo. — Doctors across the country, including at Children's Hospital Colorado, are seeing more kids and teens suffering from kidney stones.
Raegan Erickson, a varsity volleyball player at Elizabeth High School, said her senior year was served with a side of pain.
“We were at nationals, and I was super sick,” she recalled.
Despite having a constant fever for months, Erickson didn’t let it stop her from playing.
“I would go to school, and I had my high school volleyball games,” she said.
But her health issues started a couple of years before that.
“At first, it started off, and we had no idea what it was. I started getting a lot of pain in my lower right side of my back,” Erickson said. “I just remember them, like, helping me out of the car, and I just laid on the ground and, like, I couldn't really see anything. It was all kind of blurry because I was in so much pain. And we just couldn't figure out what was wrong.”
Trips to urgent care led to multiple kidney infection diagnoses, but a visit to Children’s Hospital Colorado changed everything.
“Turns out I had a kidney stone that was about the size of a large grape stuck in my kidney, and it backed up a bunch of fluid behind it, and so that was what was causing all those kidney infections and me to be sick all the time,” Erickson said. “It was kind of just like, really shocking. Like, it wasn't really a thought to anybody that that's what it could have been.”
Doctors say it’s becoming more common than you might think.
“Over the past few years, there's been an increase in the number of children, particularly adolescents and adolescent girls, increase in the incidence of kidney stones,” said Dr. Heiko Yang, a urologist at Children's Hospital Colorado.
Dr. Yang told Denver7 the number of kidney stone cases at the hospital has doubled over the last 20 years. He’s now researching what could be causing this rise in cases, whether it’s diet, hydration or something in our environment.
“One thing that is starting to become more clear is that there could be an immune component, meaning the body's natural defenses could be reacting to something that could contribute to kidney stone formation,” said Dr. Yang.
He’s helping patients like Erickson get clarity on the root cause of the issue.
“There's a huge need to understand how we can better prevent kidney stones,” he said.
Meanwhile, Erickson hopes the pain is blocked out for good.
“I haven't had anything since, but I'm still having lots of genetic testing, lots of blood work,” she said. “We're super thankful for Children's and everything that they've done and that they're helping me get back in shape and getting me so that I can go play some college volleyball.”
