A 20-year-old woman from Taiwan recently underwent surgery to have no less than 300 small stones removed from her right kidney.

The young woman, identified as Xiao Yu by Taiwanese media, was admitted to a hospital in the city of Tainan earlier this month, after complaining of severe pain in her lower back. She also had a fever and a blood test showed an unusually high white blood cell count. Doctors ordered a CT scan which showed that Yu’s right kidney was full of fluid and virtually full of kidney stones. The first order of business was to put the young woman on antibiotics, then drain the fluid from her kidney, and finally perform minimally invasive surgery to remove the hundreds of stones.

Photo: Chi Mei Hospital

In the end, doctors ended up taking out over 300 stones, between 5mm and 2cm in size. According to Taiwan News, most of the stones had an appearance similar to “little steamed buns.”

Although there are multiple factors that can lead to the formation of kidney stones, in this particular case, the patient did not enjoy drinking water at all, instead relying on sugary teas and juices from tea stands for hydration. This caused chronic dehydration, a condition in which the urine becomes more concentrated and the minerals in it crystalize to form stones.

Photo: Chi Mei Hospital

Urologists at the Chi Mei Hospital in Tainan urged the public to drink plenty of water to ensure the body can process the intake of sugars, salt, and calcium, using Xiao Yu’s case as a cautionary tale of what can happen in extreme cases of dehydration.