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| I named my stone, "Gertrude." I think I will frame it. |
Lap 5. I decide to lie down after meeting my goal and think that maybe the pain has decreased a little, and I am sadly informed by my gut that there would be no break from this. I try lying on my left side. I try lying on my right side. I lie on my back and massage my abdomen. A cramp, but not a cramp--a feeling that something inside me is tearing apart. It hurts too much to cry.
5 minutes pass. If I can make it to daylight, I'm sure it will improve.
10 minutes go by, and I decide I need to walk again. Lap 1. This is worse. Lap 2. It's no better. I round the island in the kitchen, holding myself up as I pass it, and my knees start to wobble. I let out a groan, and I'm aware that Brian has gotten up to go to the bathroom. I bypass completing lap 3 and heave myself up the stairs on all fours. "I need help. This hurts so bad, I don't know what to do. I need you to take me to the hospital."
Hesitation. I expect this. It's 3am, about 30 hours after we got home from Europe. Brian is sick with a monster cold. I wonder if this is what Brian's diverticulitis felt like. I have no idea what's wrong with me. "I need my pants and my wallet." Brian goes to the bathroom as I manage to pull on my pajama bottoms. We meet at the bottom of the stairs and he hesitates to open the front door. "What's wrong?"
Brian says, "I'm turning off the alarm." I know this, but every second of delay hurts more. The alarm is shut off and we make it down the stairs to his car. I get in the passenger seat.
"I need air." Brian rolls down the window. We're on PCH, and there is too much wind. "It's too much." Brian rolls up the window mostly.
We sail through the traffic lights to the traffic circle, and there's a red light for the left turn to get to the emergency room--I want him to run the red light. Brian isn't sure where to go for the ER.
"There," I say, and he makes another left turn into the ER dropoff. I'm aware he can't park here, but that's not my problem. I make it to the admit desk, and then crumple to the ground. "I need help. It hurts here," as I grab my right side.
Sadly, I had thought that if I could make it this far, they would help me immediately. They tell me to take a seat, and I can't sit--the pain is too intense. I try standing, and I fall to the ground. The admit desk tells me I can't lie on the floor, and I tell them I can't sit. I try heaving myself up by my arms, and I manage to stand for a while.
"I can't breathe. I told you I can't breathe, " a man yells at the admissions guy. "I need to dial 911 and go to a real hospital." I'm not really sure what happened to him, but I had a feeling he left the waiting room. There is one triage nurse, and he is dealing with the patient who came in before me. I wonder if this person is there for a cold, or bronchitis, or something equally as "not emergency."
Eventually, it's my turn, and the triage nurse tells me to sit in a chair. I can't sit. I stand, holding myself up by the countertop. Slowly, methodically, he goes through each question. I can't remember what they were. I need to lie down.
And I eventually do lie down, in the bed in the ER. They want my shirt off and a gown on. I lie there...I think for an hour or two, while the ER nurse asks me questions, hooks me up to a monitor, takes my blood pressure, and seems to accomplish nothing. The heart rate monitor keeps alarming every time my heart rate drops into the 40s. The alarm pisses me off, and my heart rate rises back into the 50s. My blood pressure is through the roof--something like 170/110. I ask Brian to ask the nurse to set the heart rate alarm lower, at 40. Somewhere during this time, I communicate that I've had my appendix removed, and I have to go to the bathroom. I come back and even though I feel like I constantly have to pee, there's nothing to pee. The nurse asks me if I've had kidney stones.
"No, but my dad and my brother both have."
At this moment, it dawns on me that this is what it must be.
"I'll report this to the doctor." The nurse disappears. My belief that my active lifestyle would avoid this genetically fated hell falls apart in the minutes of this realization. I had no idea how painful kidney stones are.
They eventually roll me to a CT scanner. Brian goes to get something to eat. Hours have transpired. The guy rolling my gurney to CT and I start talking about the cruise I was on--somehow I've told him about how we flew on a helicopter to an iceberg when we went on an Alaskan cruise many years ago, and he says those are the experiences he wants to have.
The CT goes easily--it's so much easier than an MRI. I'm aware that it's a thousand times the exposure of a single x-ray, and I don't care. It's preferable to dying.
An hour later and Brian asks what's going on. There are no results yet, and finally the doctor comes back and says I have a 2 mm stone somewhere between my kidney and my bladder--he said more specifically where it was, but I don't remember that detail. The plan is to let it pass. There's a 4 mm stone and another 2 mm stone in that right kidney and then others in my left kidney. I should follow up with my doctor, and if the pain gets worse, return immediately.
I've been hooked up to an IV and I get Toradol for the pain--it starts working and I feel fine in about 20 minutes. I wonder if the stone is passing or if it's just the pain medication, and they discharge me. We drive through Burger King on the way home, and I collapse on the couch. At some point, I decide I need to walk to CVS, because walking is supposed to help, so I pick up my drugs, and Brian asks me to get him some cold medication.
During the day, I decide that I want to watch the movie "Life," that I bought on my laptop on iTunes several weeks ago, but I can't figure out how to get the AppleTV signed into my account--effing two-factor authentication. Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhal in the same movie. Ryan Reynolds dies--this is stressful. An hour in, my pain starts to return and I take a Percocet. I have to pee through a screen filter until this stone passes.
I start watching Deadpool, and it's really hard to follow while strung out on Percocet. I don't finish it. I don't remember if I had dinner. I go to bed.
I wake up in pain about 9pm, and take another Percocet--I go back to sleep. Maybe 11pm, maybe midnight, I have to pee again, and the stone pops out. Diffuse lower back pain. It does not hurt to pee. I always assumed pissing a stone out would hurt like hell, and it does not.
I go back to sleep thinking this is over, and I wake up and realize that I've got as many as 5 other stones sitting in my kidneys that I have to get taken care of, which results in a call to my doctor, and they can't see me for 3 weeks. The scheduler is not helpful. I start screaming at her what the problem is and that these stones will put me back in the hospital, and she finally gets a message to my doctor, who responds that I have to go to a Urologist--who, luckily, can see me tomorrow.
My Urologist informs me that I need to get the larger stone broken up with lithotripsy, which is an ultrasound treatment to break up kidney stones because the 4.5mm stone may get stuck on the way out and cause me to have to have surgery--he believes it will remain in my kidney for some time, so it is urgent, but not an emergency, and the woman who schedules these procedures is out on vacation until Monday. I have that larger one to deal with, a smaller one, about the size of the one I just passed, and then the others are really not kidney stones, but small calcifications, that are of no consequence. I will have to endure the smaller stone passing at some unknown time in the future. I am a ticking time bomb.
I sit waiting...hoping that the large stone doesn't pass before they can blast the crap out of it.
