to be home like a complete unknown and pass a kidney stone......?
(apologies to Mr. Robert A. Zimmerman)
Thanks for all the well wishes. One thing about passing a stone; as soon as it hits the bladder, it is as if nothing happened.
I passed a stone in May 2000 and a second yesterday, so I might just camp outside the ER in May 2020.
There does seem to be a brother/sisterhood of stone passing. Embo\'s tale is particularly harrowing. Yeah, no thanks on that.
The number of commiserates on my second wish-I-was-stoned-free experience was long. The guy at the ER desk (he\'s passed nine as he cheerily told me while I dumped the contents of my wallet on his desk looking for an insurance card); the nurse/angel pushing hydromorphone and toradol into my IV; my family doctor\'s receptionist; and my substitute family doctor today. He\'s passed two and the story of his first was pretty entertaining. (Infants; driving himself to the ER; standing outside his car door doing the Kidney Stone shuffle -- you know the one; the half-stooped, full-wretch, \'Oh Sweet Jesus\' rag / Lindy hop at a long red light.)
My two stones were remarkably similar, besides just being jagged pieces of calcium oxalate ripping through a tiny ureter. Both started as a twinge in my left back at 2 a.m. (The second involved waking from a dream where I was trying to deflect boulders coming out of the West Portal tunnel in SF - guess where the dinner I would lose in less than 12 hours was?) The pain escalates rapidly and starts moving from back around to the front in spirals. I bet lightening bolts were coming out of my back too. You can see why here. This is about the size of my first stone:
To echo Redrum, the second time I knew what it was (well I thought I knew; and it turns out I was right, but more on that later) and while the prospects weren\'t really enticing, they were better than the first time, when I thought I was dying. And that would have been a real mess at work, which is where I was headed until Mrs. Jacketree dragged my sorry butt and kidneys to the ER.
The second time I suffered by myself in the bathroom until the timing was right to wake up the kid before we left so he would make his 7 a.m. football workout (otherwise he\'d sleep through until we got back from the hospital), allow my wife to call in to her hospital before it was too late [4:30], and beat the morning Mills rush. I had the ER to myself.
I knew the drill. Writhe in the car waiting for stoplights with no one coming. Hobble into the ER (they saved my room), and wait for the sweet nectar of pain relief and anti-nausea drugs pulsing through my right hand. The latter didn\'t work as well this time (ref. Philly Cheesesteak tossing), but the other drugs dialed down my pain from 7 (\'cause I\'m a faux tough guy and 10 - \'the pain of having your arm ripped off\' (woa! that sounds a lot worse; besides I once suffered 25 broken bones in my leg, ankle and foot and that was indeed worse than the stone. I\'d give that a 9 because while my foot was spun 270 degrees, it
was still attached) to 2 until the stone started moving again - nothing gets rid of that pain; but at least narcotics numb the rest of my body and it seems better than freaking out in my own bathroom. A CT scan interrupted only by a malfunctioning fire alarm -- Jerome actually wheeled me back out and half way through the lobby before we realized there was no fire, and I\'m discharged to more or less peacefully pass the stone at home before dinner. At which time I managed to keep down some Jiff. The nausea really hung around this time.
**PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT**
Drink lots of water. Citrus fruits are supposed to help too. Calcium isn\'t evil.
But drinking lots of water doesn\'t make you immune to kidney stones. They AREN\'T something to tough out at home. My attending ordered the CT because she was worried about a possible aortic dissection and once I heard that, I stopped apologizing for wasting their time and puke bags.