About this time yesterday, I began to experience acute pain in my right side and back — the familiar grimacing kind of agony that only stone-makers know. In just a short time, it was so intense that everything I’d eaten for the past 30 days came roaring to the surface. The vomiting enabled the stone to “step aside” and let urine flow into my bladder, thereby relieving the pain. I went to the doctor and made arrangements for a cat scan this morning.

Unfortunately, the little terrorist had other ideas, and by 6:30pm, I was in agony again. So we went off to the emergency room and said hello to dilaudid (better living through chemistry). They did a cat scan, which revealed the bastard was stuck in my ureter just above the bladder. This gave me hope. Hell, I’d already moved it that far, so at least I knew it “could” be shoved along, and I “could” avoid surgery. Between IV fluids and about a quart of orange juice, the thing moved into my bladder around 1 a.m., and I passed it into a strainer a couple of hours later. It was a fragment from the lithotripsy done on July 22nd.

So now I’m home and sore, but at least that gripping pain is gone. Women like to point out that childbirth is like 12 hours of kidney stone pain, but at least they get a child when it’s all said and done. All I got was a lousy night’s sleep and a 30-ounce plastic drinking cup with the logo of Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine.

Nice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 10:58 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.