Small things can make a big difference, especially when the small thing is a tiny deposit of calcium in your kidney. When I was a child, I vaguely remember waking up one morning to the strange presence of my next-door neighbor Mrs. Thomas. A retired principal, she was an eccentric force of nature and the only person who ever referred to me, in the presence of mom, as anything other than my given name. Mrs. Thomas always called me, “Stevo.”
“Good morning, Stevo,” she said, “time to get ready for school.” The fact that Mrs. Thomas was awakening me was definitely out of the ordinary–usually that was the job of my mom–but Mrs. Thomas was fond of quirky behavior so it wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary for her. At some point, she explained to me that my mom had to take my dad to the hospital in the middle of the night. He was in a lot of pain. Apparently, he was afflicted with something called a kidney stone.
Like father, like son. This past Monday, at 3 AM, I awoke bolt upright with a sharp pain, vomited, put on clothes, vomited again, then drove myself, with great haste, to the emergency room–because I wasn’t about to ask my wife to drive me again.
In the previous weeks, first my parents and then my wife had driven me to the emergency room on two separate occasions, but the pain always subsided right as we got to the hospital parking lot. Like a typical man, I refused and resisted actually going into the emergency room, having convinced myself it was likely just a bad case of indigestion. The third time was the charm, however. I not only made it to the parking lot, but I made it inside the emergency room, where I got a two for one deal: two kidney stones for the price of one CT scan.
For anyone wanting a life reset, I recommend kidney stones. I don’t recommend them for much else, but there is nothing like extreme discomfort and waves of acute pain for making you second guess life choices and reevaluate priorities. And the great thing about kidney stones is that they aren’t technically a medical emergency. This was explained to me by the ER doctor who said “the good news is it only feels like you’re dying.”
“the good news is it only feels like you’re dying.”, Good news? Huh
Ouch!
I had a 7mm one, trying to get through a 4mm space, in 2017. It felt like labor without any drugs. My mom had them too. But I found out one of my medications can cause them too. And supposedly alcohol can break them down.
Ouch, mine were only 3mm and 4mm, so I can’t imagine what a 7mm one must have felt like. I’m supposed go back for a follow-up so they can do some sort of analysis to tell me what caused them. Thankfully, they said I don’t have any more lingering in my kidneys, so here’s hoping I can prevent more from forming.
Thankfully, this is not something I have ever experienced. My gallbladder did decide twenty years ago it no longer liked the gig and quit. It caused excruciating and inhabiting chest pain that had everyone confused for a while. Glad you didn’t die!
Ouch, that sounds really bad. Strange how ailments in one area can cause pain in another. Similar thing kind of happened with me and kidney stones–pain felt more like it was in my stomach than kidney, but dr. said it has to do with nerves and nervous system around my stomach interacting with the kidney. Glad I’m still among the living!