The end of the stone

Well, for those of you that have been following along, I finally passed my kidney stone.  What a relief!  No more pain, no more drugs and no more pain!  But most importantly, no more pain!  I’m excited, nay, I am THRILLED.  Mere words can not begin to describe my joy and relief.

Thursday, June 11, 2009 is going down on my calendar as a special day.  I’m making it a holiday, just for me.

I have a long list of people to thank for dealing with me over the past week.  Being a man, being sick is a burden that reverts me back to a little boy.  Yeah, I can admit it.  At least this time, I was in enough pain that people overlooked it.

First and foremost, I have to thank the Evil Wife Creature for everything she has done for me.  She was awesome.  Patient, kind, loving, and did her best to take care of me.  At the end of the day, what more can you ask for when you’re suffering so badly?  So thanks baby.  In this case my lovely dragon, RAWR means I love you.

 

The Evil Wife Creature.  Hear her RAWR!

Baby, I will never forget your eagerness to just jump in the car and rush me to the ER with grave concern written all over you beautiful face.  For prosperity purposes, I managed to find a picture from a road camera that documents are trip to the ER.

I tell ya, I’m a lucky man!

Of course, I also have to thank the local hospital vampires, guy and girl, who quickly tortured helped me by taking blood.  Of course, their multiple attempts to stick a vein won’t be mentioned.

They look happy, yes?  I’m sure they were as thrilled as I was by their attentions.

I also must thank my first doctor, who in his concern, completely forgot to give me the proper information before throwing me out the door and sending me home to pace back and forth from the pain I was in.  No doubt, he had far weightier matters on his mind, such as that nights menu.  That’s right, thank you Mr. Swedish Chef Doctor.  I’ll never forget you.

I will admit that I had second thoughts about even mentioning the second ER doc.  Frankly, when I opened my eyes and saw him standing over me, I almost screamed and ran.  But the Evil Wife Creature held me down for my own good and let out a mighty RAWR, breaking numerous glass objects and gave him the Evil Eye.  He behaved.  He to, in his concern, forgot to give me important information, but luckily, the Evil Wife Creature refused to deal with me in my poor state and took matters into her own hands.

And Doc?  I hope you finally got that meal you were going on and on about instead of taking care of me.  Let’s see, your hunger pains over my kidney stone pains.  Wow, they don’t even come close to matching up!

Lastly, I must thank my kidney stone.  Is that weird?  Maybe, but the stone taught me a valuable lesson.  Nothing else can quite turn you into a shaking, sweating, crying, slag of a human quite like a kidney stone.  I felt you trying to rip out of my insides for 6 inhuman days.

Personally, I still think I was invaded by an evil alien creature, like the one pictured above, and the Evil Wife Creature killed it and refuses to tell me about it so I won’t cry, weep, and grind my teeth in despair.

In the end, the stone I was feeling inside me didn’t quite match up to my expectations, which was a stone like this.

Not the small little thing I dropped off for the lab to analyze.  It’s hard to believe that something that is only 3mm can cause so much pain, but let me assure you that it can.  It came, it saw, it kicked my rear end.

But all is well that ends well, at least for now.  I have a second stone sitting in my kidney that is no doubt plotting evil and mayhem.  Oh the joy –headesk-

~ Kev

A Kidney Stoned Life

I wanted to blog my way through this journey, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in way to much pain to share.  But I’m sitting here during one of my rare, but daily periods of having very little pain and my wife is hiding from me, so I decided to give everyone and idea of what it’s like to have a kidney stone.

If you read my last blog, you will already know I woke up last Saturday in incredible pain.  After finally going to the ER, I was diagnosed with having a Kidney Stone.

If you’re a guy, I just struck fear into the depths of your heart.  I would say I’m sorry, but hey, I’m suffering here.

So, this is day 4 of the Kidney Stoned life.  Each day has brought it’s own frustrations and the seemingly never ending pain.  I went to a Urologist today, and I am scheduled to have surgery next Monday, which let me tell you just plain SUCKS.  In short, I have to endure the rest of this week with this pain, unless I somehow manage to pass the stone first.

So, can you describe the pain from having a Kidney Stone?

Did you see the movie Armageddon with Bruce Willis?  Sure you have.  Do you remember the scene in which Owen Wilson’s character asks what they can expect on the asteroid?  He is told a bunch of awful stuff and Owen says something along the lines of “So the worst possible environment, that’s all you had to say”.  Well, that pretty much describes the pain from a Kidney Stone.  The worst possible pain you can imagine.  You ever seen the movie Alien?  When the little Alien comes busting out of the guy’s chest?  Yup.  Feels like that.  I have considered hanging a sign around my neck that reads: “Evil Alien on Board”.

Seriously, the pain is incredible.  It feels like something is trying to tear itself out of your side.  It’s not a “sharp” pain and it’s not a “nagging” pain.  It’s both sharp and nagging, and it is constant.  There is no escaping the pain.  You can’t press on your side to get some form of relief.  I resorted to pacing.  I have been in so much pain that it is impossible to sit still.  Now that I am into it 4 days, it also means that my side is sore.  I feel like someone took a baseball bat, say Babe Ruth, and somehow convinced me to raise my right arm so he could pretend to hit a home run, using my side.

At this point, can you share what you have to look forward to next?

Yes.  Pain.

Pain you say?  Can you tell us how you endure it?

I really wish I could.  I have no idea, but it has given me an awesome respect for the amount of pain the human body can endure.

They say that Men can finally understand the pain from Child Labor.  What do you think?

That woman are awesome creatures, especially since having endured it once, many go on to let their husbands impregnate them again.  If it was me?  I would be wacking my husband with a bat, like Babe Ruth did to my side.  I don’t know how to compare obviously, since I’m a man.  But I will say that I had 4 different people at the Urologist’s office tell me that many woman who have had kids and have had kidney stones say they would rather have another child than a kidney stone.  If that little tidbit doesn’t put things into perspective for you, I don’t know what will.  Imagine it.  Enduring a child growing in your belly for 9 months.  Aches and pains, morning sickness, kicks to internal organs, shortness of breath, swelling body parts, and having a part of your body stretch to accommodate a head????  Ummmm… yeah.

What treatment options are there for Kidney Stones?

There are 4 options.  You can pass the stone, you can have a pulse treatment which will break the stone up into tiny pieces, you can have laser surgery or a stint put in.  Which one is right for you will depend on your stone and you.  Obviously, the best you can hope for is to quickly pass the thing, in say like under 1 day.  Like that is going to happen.  The second best choice is to have the pulse treatment.  You go in, they place a machine against your side, they turn it on, it reduces the stone to bits, and you go home and pass the tiny parts.  Once broken down, this usually happens fairly quickly.  Unfortunately, what you don’t learn until it’s to late, is that by going to the ER, they have to give you a CAT Scan to make sure it’s not your appendix, and also to diagnose the stone.  When they do this, they give you a liquid that lights up your insides.  When you go the Urologist, after this visit, they have to take an x-ray to determine where the stone is before doing this treatment.  It’s been 4 days since my CAT Scan and my insides are still glowing like a Christmas Tree, so the Doc couldn’t see the stone.

The next two options are not for the faint of heart and if you’re a guy, prepare to faint.  The laser or stint method is where the but you to sleep and insert a small camera through your penis and look inside your bladder.  From there, they go up the Ureter with a smaller camera.  If the stone is close to the bladder, they will use a laser to turn the stone into dust.  From there you wake up, with no more pain (from the kidney stone) and go home, all done.  If the stone is closer to the kidney, they put a stint in.  This is a plastic tube that they shove up the Ureter from the bladder to the kidney.  This will either capture the stone (it’s going to be bigger than your Ureter), or it’s going to shove the stone to the side.  This will take away the pain, until the remove it a few days later.  Because your Ureter is stretched out, this will allow the stone to pass quickly.

You mean to tell me that you’re going to let some Doctor shove a camera up your you know what?

At this point, yes.  I’m willing to do almost anything to make the pain stop.  Stand on my head naked in times square?  I would do it and would only say “sucks to be you, since you have to see me”.

So that is what it’s like to have a Kidney Stones Life.

~ Kev

An Infamous Day

Some mornings when you wake up, you just know this day is going to be one of the ones that go down in infamy.

Today was one of those days for me.

I was awakened this morning by a very intense, very sharp, pain in my side.  I thought at first that my wife had finally tried to kill me in my sleep a giant had crept into my room and kicked me in the side.  The pain was awful.  I got up and inspected my side for stab wounds took some Tylenol in hopes that whatever it was, would go away.  Unfortunately, it didn’t.  I started to get concerned after an hour and I began to think I was suffering from appendicitis.  My manly whimpering attempts to work through the pain woke up my wife, who decided to take pity on me.  Despite my protests, she decided it was time for me to do something about it, so she told me in no uncertain terms I was going to the ER.

I’m a fairly smart man most days, and thankfully, today was one of my smarter ones, because when my wife makes up her mind, there is just no stopping her.  So we got dressed and off we went to the hospital where my wife made sure to hit every bump in the road in some bazaar form of retribution.

When we finally arrived at the ER, I was lucky enough not to have to wait long, because by this point, the pain was so bad, I had an evil mind set.  Despite being the manly man that I am, I don’t tolerate pain all that well.  The registration nurse ignored my chants of “give me drugs” and got me registered.  I find it funny that they have this one particular question they ask.  They ask you, on a scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being the worst pain you have ever felt, rate your pain.  Hunched over, whimpering in pain, with bloodshot eyes, I calmly asked her if 10 was as high as it went, because 10 wouldn’t describe the pain I felt.  For some reason, she thought that was hilarious.  After shooing me away, I hobbled back to the waiting area and started chanting again tried to be patient, if you’ll pardon the pun.

I got back into an exam room and didn’t even mind the degradation of having to strip and put on one of those exam gowns designed my some evil alien that we all love to hate.  Then I got a visit from the local vampire who wanted my blood.  Apparently, he was a young vampire, because even after repeated sticks and probing with a needle, he was unable to get any.  So they called in a younger, but far more experienced vampire who finally found a vein that interested her.  Personally, I think there was a group of vampires outside the room laughing quietly at the whole ordeal.

Then it was time to pace back and forth, ignoring the repeated question of “don’t you want to lay down?” because I was in far to much pain to lay down.  Plus, it hurt worse when I did.  Finally the Doc came in, looking like some Swedish Model and took one look at my evil glare, heard my chanting, and fled to get a nurse who was loaded with pain medication.  FINALLY.  All I have to say is that whoever invented morphine, may they be blessed.

Then it was time for my exam and the Swedish Model of a doctor did all manner of things, like poking and pressing on my side where it hurt, and thumping my back over my kidneys.  Because I didn’t scream like a girl and try to kick him, he said, he thought I might have appendicitis.  They ordered up a cat scan and I was forced to drink this awful concoction that they claimed would taste like Sierra Mist, but instead tasted like swamp water from the depths of hell crap.  Off I went to have my cat scan done.

You know, it’s funny how some people are.  One of the scan techs began to amuse me with tales of how I would feel like I was burning up with a fever, feel sick to my stomach, and feel like I peed on myself from the additional glow in the dark contrast concoction that they gave me though my IV.  When the other technician came to give me this concoction, after the evil tech had left the room, he silently told me it wouldn’t be as bad as she made it out to be at all, to just relax.  I swear I saw fear in his eyes, which made me think the other tech was actually an evil alien body snatcher.  The cat scan went smoothly and I was taken back to my exam room.

At this point, I was fully expecting to be told I was going under the knife, to remove a misbehaving appendix.  So it was with some surprise that I was told by my Swedish Model doc that I had a kidney stone after all, and that it was passing from my kidney, which was causing all the pain.  So I was given a handful of prescriptions, one for pain thank the Lord, and was told to go home and prepare to learn what it was like to have a baby wait for the stone to pass.

The person who gave me instructions, which in my drugged state I was unable to process, told me I needed to name my stone, like it was a baby, because that so totally makes sense.  Then, feeling relief that at least I wouldn’t have to have surgery, I stumbled into my clothes and let my darling wife help me walk out.  Thankfully, she decided to be nice and not let me fall, because let me tell you, that morphine was kicking my behind.  So off we went, and I could swear that I could hear the vampires still snickering, and the Swedish Model Doctor imitating the Swedish Chef Muppet.  But that could have been the drugs.

My daughter says that I should name this stone “Arpeggio”, because “that’s such a fun word to say”.  You know?  I think she is right.

~ Kev