Now, before you go calling the gendarmes to turn me in, allow an explanation. Perchance some of you are imagining me partaking in illegal substances to enhance a game of mini-golf with all the other pleasure seekers who invaded my beach town this holiday weekend? You’d be mistaken. Instead, I was handed the golden opportunity to experience the agony that is a KIDNEY STONE, a misnomer if you ask me. Perhaps sharp and jagged agony inducing boulder would be more apt.
For the past 72 hours, I’ve had the sensation that I’m being repeatedly knifed in the back with a shiv or that I accidentally swallowed a Chinese star and it’s traveling through my innards, shredding me as it goes. I went to the E.R. and endured an interminable wait because a) I didn’t have chest pains, and b) my arm wasn’t severed and issuing forth a fountain of blood.
When the doctor finally saw me, she told me I was going to have a CAT scan–another 3 hours of waiting, drinking vile substances and being placed inside a metal tube. I wrinkled my nose at the thought and she got annoyed with me. She sent a nurse over with a prescription and discharge papers. And then I was uncerimoniously booted from the hospital.
The next day I went to see my doctor and she ordered up a renal ultrasound, but since it’s a holiday weekend, I can’t have it until Wednesday. She wrote me a prescription for some mood-enhancing painkillers, darvo-death or something similar, and told me to go back to the E.R. if I got worse.
Sadly, my trip to Colonial Williamsburg is off and instead of wearing a tri-cornered hat and chasing a wooden hoop with a stick, I’ll be reporting on location from my bed this week. Has anyone else suffered the evil that is a kidney stone? Entertain me with your tales of woe and encouragement–I’m desperate over here.
Oh you poor soul. I had kidney stones 4 days before my high school graduation and honestly thought I was going to fall over dead. Many women I have talked to say its worse than childbirth – something I am confident I no longer want anything to do with (for various reasons)…
Neat blog by the way…
Hey, can’t they bombard those with sound waves and break them up? Seems I heard something like that somewhere.
No.. I haven’t.. TG!
I have heard that it passes….
I have heard that it is worse then giving birth.
I’m wishing you a big GET WELL!
I really hope you feel better.
Kidney stones, they suck
Maybe a good laugh will help
a Get Well haiku
Maybe you should really get stoned! Just kidding! I am currently having tests run, urologist seems to think I have silent kidney stones??? Every now and then it feels like someone has rammed a red hot poker into my lower back. So much for silence, huh! The technician running the scan could not get the dye to enter my veins. I resembled a purple pin cushion for about a week! My next test sounds equally as exciting and fun, exploring via camera. Oh Happy Day! Hope you are feeling much better very soon.
P.S. I enjoy reading your blog and visited from “Dish”, I haven’t commented before b/c wordpress requires an account etc.
My poor husband has had them on a couple of occasions. He had to have them broken up with the sound waves once. They put you in a tub and shoot sound through the water. It causes the big ones to break into little pieces but even those ‘little’ pieces don’t feel so little according to him. His advice: Drink a lot of water and take LOTS of pain meds! Get well soon!
Now see, I saw the headline and, knowing about the trip to Williamsburg, was picturing you in stocks being pelted by kolonial kids. This sounds worse, because those other stones would no doubt have been styrofoamy props.
Hmm, would the reenactment villagers be called the “propulace”?
Anyway, good wishes for a rapid recovery.
thanks for all the well wishes…i am feeling better today–no stabbing pains that drop me to my knees.
i’m supposed to go for a renal ultrasound tomorrow but i’d rather stay home and read some books, much to my mum’s chagrin.
Reading this reminded me of the time several years ago when my good friend Harold passed a Kidney Stone. Being a geek with access to some relatively killer technology at his disposal (being at the time an engineer for the local R&D outfit Sigma Technologies, he took the stone to work, where he subsequently examined it under am SEM (Scanning Electron Mivroscope).
Turns out that there’s nothing stone-liek about a kidney “stone.” Under the power of this device, he revealed its true mature to look like a particularly evil-looking space crystal, with needle-like spires extruding from it in all directions. I wish I had the image to share with you. Unsettling is one word. But it’s really more like something out of the Sci-Fi/Horror genre.
It’s no wonder those things are as painful as we hear.
My sympathies go out to you! If I can get a hold of the image, I will happily share it with you!
Oh my dearest Curly, I can’t tell you how sorry I was to read this. I’ve been avoiding the computer for selfish reasons, and here you were – suffering.. I hope you are feeling much better soon. Sending big waves of cyber-sympathy (may they break up those foul stones!) xoxoxo
My mum said the same thing as Around the Funny Farm – giving birth was easier – and the drugs were better.
They let mum keep her kidney stone – and she took it home and smashed it with a hammer and said “Now who’s in pain huh??!!”
I hope you feel better soon!!