How can I make a hole through a stone or crystal?

Submandibular (under the tongue) Salivary Stone self removal?

• I don't have a question any more, but I wanted to post this question because I spent the past month researching this. I had a lump in the salivary gland under my tongue on the right side develop about 5 months ago. It worried me for a while, but didn't seem to get worse and I noticed I could move it around with my tongue. I figured that cancer probably doesnt move around like that, but still was worried. I kind of just went on with my life and didn't get it checked because I don't have good insurance. I also had the right side under my jaw swell up after eating sour/sweet/spicy foods. Basically foods that make you produce a lot of saliva. I started researching it and discovered salivary stones. I knew this was what i had because I saw pictures of others matching mine. It was a small pea sized white stone inside my gland under the tongue. So anyway, I couldnt find advice on how to remove it by myself or if that was even possible. Then I read where doctors in some cases can massage it out of the small opening where saliva comes out. I got close to the bathroom mirror and observed where the saliva squirts out under the tongue. I have a small duct almost directly in the middle. It seemed that the stone would get pushed toward the opening when saliva was produced, and I am now assuming that this blockage was causing the swelling the the gland due to too much saliva backed up. So I began to try to push it toward the exit point and squeeze it. But it hurt. Felt kinda like a pinch, and I was unsure about the hole's ability to open up that far. So about a week ago, I was up in the middle of the night and just said f - it! Im just gonna try to push this thing out and see how bad it feels. I got a pair of fweezers and sterilized them, washed my hands thouroughly, and got some hot sauce to produce saliva to push it forward. Put the hot sauce on my tongue and it worked... pushed it right to the exit point inside in the middle. Then I took the tweezers and put them behind the stone and began to push it toward the exit. It felt weird to pull on it, but I didn't care anymore and i pushed harder and harder.... and POP!! That little thing came right out of the hole! It was amazing, and it scared the crap out of me when it happened, but it was awesome. I spit it into my hand and washed it and looked at it. It was just a white little stone like thing. Kinda like bone material but not as solid because I squished it with the tweezers after squeezing REAL hard. Anyway, so I did have some pain by the hole that it came out of. It ripped it a little and it was bleeding. I spit out blood for a little bit, but honestly it wasn't even close to as bad as I thought it might be. It just felt like a pinch. And it is healing up nicely after a week, but has been slightly sore. NOW...... all that being said, I do NOT recomend that you do this by yourself without a doctor. If I had the insurance, I would have gone right to an Ear Nose Throat / or neck & Head specialist. Oh and when I called the nurse at my doc's office and told her about it in the beginning, she had no clue and said she had never heard of swelling after eating. What a great thing to say to a patient, right? "Oh yeah, never heard of that... sounds weird." But my point to writing this is to tell you that it is possible to pop them out yourself if it is your ONLY option. I would however not recomend popping out stones that are any bigger than a small pea or a bb because I'm sure it would rip the hole even more and bleed a lot and hurt worse. But if it's just a small one, get the saliva flowing and see if you can flush it out and push it out with tweezers. Oh and by the way, the swelling in my gland under the jaw has gone down entirely. I still may try to see a specialist and get x-rays or something just to be sure it is clear now in there, but hey... sometimes you gotta handle stuff when you are broke. Hope this helps anyone out there dealing with a submandibular stone. Does anybody have anything to add? Have you ever had a stone or removed it yourself?

• Answer:

  "submandibular (under the tongue) Salivary Stone self removal?" -- You've got the wrong location. If the stone is under your tongue, it's sublingual. If it's below your jaw, it's submandibular (under the mandible). "Oh and when I called the nurse at my doc's office..." -- That wasn't a nurse you spoke to. "Hope this helps anyone out there dealing with a submandibular stone." -- I'm afraid it won't. You've written about salivary stones. The stones are called calculi (singular is calculus). Kidney stones, etc. are all called calculi. It resembled bone, as you noted, because calculi are primarily calcium phosphate and of calcium carbonate. Sialolithiasis is the term for having calculus in a salivary gland. They don't usually come in pairs or multiples. You won't need X-rays. Something like 90% occur in one of the submandibular glands. It's rare to have sialolithiasis in a sublingual gland. If this had been your submandibular gland, as you refer to it, you would probably have required surgical excision. It may never happen again but if it did, an ENT would try doing what you did. If that didn't work right away, the doctor would've told you to increase your fluid intake, suck on sour candy or lemons/grapefruit and massage the salivary duct -- all this in an attempt to increase your saliva flow and remove the calculus without surgery. If you have sialolithiasis a third time, or if you have an infection because of it, you will likely be a surgical candidate for adenectomy. In other words, you did the right thing.