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Rock of the Aged
By Scott Harrup | January 21, 2008
Thursday, December 27, during our family’s Christmas visit to Fort Wayne, Ind., had not yet dawned. But my sleep evaporated around 3 with a pain familiar to a select population of patients who ignore their bodies’ need for adequate hydration.
My right kidney announced its gift of a stone. I began the ordeal of pacing the bathroom and trying to keep my moans from awakening my family.
No dice. Jodie came to the door to see why I wasn’t coming back to bed. I told her the news. She went down the hall to see if her sister had any pain meds. Stacy’s bout with kidney stones had been pretty severe.
I took Stacy’s last two pills, but couldn’t keep them down. The spasms were that bad.
By 4, brother-in-law Bill was driving me to the hospital as fast as the snow flurries would allow.
Things didn’t get better for a while. After gritting my teeth in agony during the inevitable questionnaire in the Emergency ward about health insurance, Social Security number, home address, etc., I staggered to a curtained partition and crawled onto the bed. First one nurse and then a second began harpooning my arms in a futile search for a vein. The promise of IV’d pain relief was proving empty.
By around 6, they’d found a vein, injected some comfort, and taken a CAT scan of a 3- to 4-millimeter stone. I went home with a prescription for more pain meds and a sheet of instructions for coaxing the offending mineral deposit out of my body.
I’m pain-free and drinking water by the quart these days. I had become neglectful during the six or seven years since my previous bout with kidney stones.
My latest unwanted personal pebble reminded me some areas of responsibility are non-negotiable. In the midst of a kidney stone attack it’s too late to kick yourself for sipping lattes and going all day on 8 ounces of water. The laws of nature don’t reverse themselves to make way for negligence. Given my neglect, my little guest was as inevitable as gravity.
Maybe I need to re-examine some other areas of discipline as well.
Topics: Bizarre, Family Life |
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Love reading your blog, and … enjoy TPE stuff. … I identified well with the kidney stones thing. My husband, John Ney, who is currently in Durham, NC doing … computing work … called me out of bed to pray for him as he was in terrible pain. I had him on one cell phone, and my MIL on the real phone … and we think it was a kidney stone. He’s not been taking in enough fluids. Very scary. I’m sending him a copy of your blog! LOL
Greetings from AG members at Christian CHapel, AG, Columbia, MO.
Lorrie and John Ney