Kidney Stones

[nostone]

Hi. I am new to the forum and I have a question about how reliable CT scans are as indicators of stones and/or kidney infection. I will be brief and give you some background info:

Last fall, I went to my family doc for intermittent abdominal pain. I would have random sharp pains throughout my lower abdomen and particularly in my left side in the lower rib area. It felt like a runner's stitch. My doc felt around, decided it was related to my polycystic ovaries and that was that.

About a week and a half ago, I started having the pain in my left lower rib again, radiating to my back, only this time it lasted most of the day. Out of the last 10 days, I have felt this pain for 8 of them. I went back to my family doc and he said he felt some sort of "knot" or something in my back right below the ribs. He did a urinalysis and I had microscopic blood in the urine. So, he sent me for a CT scan yesterday (without contrast) as he suspected a kidney stone.

The CT came back normal (no stones) and the bloodwork had no signs of infection. So, he says I either didn't have a stone or it has passed in the day before my scan. My pain was on a scale of 1 to 10 about a 4 or 5 (not excrutiating as I would think passing a stone would be). I have also been having urinary urgency (feeling like have have to go 2 or 3 times within about 5 min, but only actually producing anything the first time) for over a year. I was also passing a lot of white tissue-like material in my urine this past week. I am still in pain on my left side (I feel tight on that side, sort of bloated from my armpit to my hip, and mildly sharp pain) and I am now having sharper pains on my right side in the rib and back. My doc wants to do another urinalysis in a week to see if the blood is still there.

My question is this, if I've been having these symptoms for a year and the pain is still not gone, is it possible the CT scan missed the stone? Could I have some sort of infection that wouldn't show up on the CT scan or the blood work? I don't want to have a kidney stone, but this pain concerns me and I want to make sure I don't miss something.

Thank you for your help.