Hi! It is me again. First of all I wanted to say thanks to hopefulhope for your advice. This is my first problem that I have had with my kidneys and your help was much appreciated. I was wondering if you had different symptoms with kidney infections compared to kidney stones? My Dr. acts like this is no big deal so should I just wait it out and hope to get better? When do you decide that it is so bad that you need to go to the ER and will they do anything for you? I figured that they would just tell you to go to your regular Dr. I have read all of the message boards and I noticed that nobody has complained of swelling from fluid retention. Has anybody else had that problem? I cannot wear my rings, my watch or even my tennis shoes because of the swelling. Is that normal? Sorry so many questions I just don't know what to do. Any replies I would really be grateful. Thanks again hopefulhope I am trying all of the tips you gave me.

The pain from kidney stones is likely to be far worse than from an infection, although the pain from infection can be severe too. Also, it is not likely that you will have fluid retention and swelling with kidney stones, whereas with renal problems this is possible.

This sounds like more than infection to me, as with an infection, you would generally tend not to get swelling of this kind.

Do you have hypertension or diabetes?

I think you need to go and have further investigations for this, as symptoms such as you describe, could be due to some form of renal impairment.