Hydronephrosis

Hi, Lauren. The kidneys are where urine is originally created. It then gets sent from the kidneys down through the ureters, then into the bladder and out of the body through the urethra when we urinate. (That whole passageway is referred to as the "urinary tract".) Hydronephrosis means that one or both of the kidneys are swollen, because of urine backing up into the kidneys. Generally this is because there is an obstruction somewhere in the urinary tract. A kidney stone stuck somewhere is one of the most common obstructions causing hydronephrosis. Pregnancy is another source: the pregnancy sometimes pushes the womb against the ureters, onbstructing them. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) can inflame the urinary tract, and cause obstruction through inflammation. Cancers -- kidney, prostate (in men), bladder, cervical (in women), or ovarian (in women) -- are another source, when a tumor forms that presses against some part of the urinary tract.

Basically, you want to remove the obstruction as soon as hydronephrosis is detected. Otherwise, permanent damage to the kidneys can occur, sometimes instigating chronic kidney disease. That's what happened to me: I had an enlarged prostate, which squeezed the urinary tract, causing urine to back up to the kidneys, which then caused hydronephrosis -- it lasted for 3 months before someone diagnosed it correctly, and then inserted a catheter that opened up the blocked urinary tract and drained the backed up urine out, finally giving some relief to the poor kidneys. (Three months was long enough to do significant permanent damage to my kidneys, initiating kidney disease.)

So you need to do the same thing: remove the obstruction ASAP! Apparently they're doing some kind of imaging (CT scan? MRI?) to figure out what the obstruction is. I'm amazed you were diagnosed with hydronephrosis back in August, but (apparently) no one did anything to remove the obstruction in all these many months. That's a VERY long time to be allowing the kidney to be swollen like that, unless they somehow judged the swelling was not very much. Still. . . it's a long time.

If your hydronephrosis is caused by a UTI, then you can take antibiotics for the infection. Or try any of the alternative approaches to UTIs (cranberry juice,D-mannose, etc.) If the cause is something else, I'm not aware of anything you can take that would relieve the flank pain, which probably is a symptom of the hydronephrosis. The best next step is to remove the obstruction. Also, if the kidneys are being damaged, you have to be very careful with taking NSAID painkillers (aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, etc.), because they can further damage already damaged kidneys.

If you haven't done it already, it would be useful to get some basic kidney tests (e.g., creatinine and eGFR) to see what shape your kidneys are in.