Water anyone?

As I approached the small town about 20 miles south of here this morning, I began having this dull ache in my lower back. I often have lower back pain in part due to poor posture, in part due to the way I sleep, in part due to my, uh, not-so-small chest size. It remained in my lower back but also moved around to my lower abdomen too. The nagging turned into sharp, twisting pain and my mind began racing as I thought "What IS this? Appendicitis? Muscle spasms? Food poisoning?" Walking around, stretching, taking an antacid, taking Ibuprofen, NOTHING was helping and it was getting worse.

I called D and told him I was cancelling my appointment and driving back home because something was wrong. I called the mother of my client, explained that I had to return home and I, or someone, would call later to reschedule the evaluation. As I drove home, the pain became unbearable. I pulled over to the side of the highway, turned on my hazard lights, and vomitted. Can I just say, that if you see a car with hazards on parked on the side of the highway, GET OVER IN THE LEFT LANE. I was amazed at the audacity of people flying by me, just feet away from my open door and my head hanging out, at 70 miles per hour. Gimme a break, people!

I called D again and told him to just meet me at the ER as that's where I was headed. He said, "Is it a kidney stone?" Ahhhh, yes. That must be it! I vaguely remembered the same pain/vomitting/nightmare one early winter morning when I was 23. I was at D's apt after a night of partying and we had had a huge ice storm. I was in so much pain, I left his apt and drove/slid my car down the hill to the ER, where I promptly vomitted on my new winter coat.) A kidney stone! I thought to myself, "Please just let it be a kidney stone" b/c I knew that while this was the most pain I was likely to ever experience, it would be easily fixed. Just. Get. To. The. ER. Fast. Do. Not. Crash. Your. Car. On. The. Way.

He called me 10 minutes later to check on me and was at the ER waiting. I pulled into the ER parking lot, opened the car door, and vomitted again. Too much information? Sorry.

Lo and behold, I was determined to have a kidney stone. Actually, Three. I was passing one that was too far down to see on the CT scan, and there are two more - one in each kidney. When the doc showed me the CT scan, I thought I was looking at bilateral tumors on my kidneys. Nope. Just stones....7 mm long. That's BIG people. HUGE.

So, after some IV naseau medicine, a nice shot of Dilauded, I was headed back home. Dan got me tucked into bed, set me up with my water, water, more water, pain meds, and a strainer next to the toilet to pee through (to catch the micro pieces of sand that are kidney stones).

Tommorrow I am off to the urologist. We have to come up with a "plan of action" to deal with the two tumors, uh, I mean stones that have yet to come out of my kidneys. Gotta love the hard water down here! (The "experts" say that the fact that our whole county is built on a limestone quarry has nothing to do with the insurgence of kidney stones in our local community. All I know is that I know of no less than six people in my close circle of friends who had kidney stones before the age of twenty-five. Coincidence? I don't think so....)

Have you had one? OMG. Drink more water!