Update

Fear not my minions, I am back and reading furiously.  Where was I you ask, well everything started over a week ago when I wound up in the ER in excruciating pain that turned out to be a kidney stone the size of a pea.  Sounds like fun doesn't it? 

The pain came out of nowhere, I was sitting at the computer checking emails and was blindsided with pain in my back and lower right abdomen.  It felt like someone had just stabbed me.  So I laid down on the couch and told Mark that I was in agony and called my mom.  My first instinct was appendicitis, which in hindsight I wish it was that way it could have been removed and the pain would have stopped in a more reasonable amount of time.  So after consulting with Dr Mom, we packed up and went to the ER since the pain was showing no signs of letting up, and I'm pretty tough when it comes to pain.  The ER was a pain in the ass.  They took my vitals after about an hour and a half which was rocket speed compared with the rest.  After the vitals, they stuck me in the world's most uncomfortable wheelchair for the wait of a lifetime for a bed.  Whoever does ER triage needs to be slapped in the back of the head.  Making someone wait with excruciating abdominal pain that could be appendicitis while little Tommy and Billy get stitched up and casted is nonsense.  Those kids were not bleeding profusely nor had bones sticking out of any skin, they could have waited.

I think it took something like 4 or 5 hours to get a bed.  So in comes doc who asks about the symptoms and poke around my belly saying that the pain must not be too bad since he was poking pretty hard.  Um, jerk store my pain was way deeper than your hands could ever palpate.  I told you that, you didn't listen.  After a pelvic exam, an ultrasound was ordered and so was a CT scan.  The CT scan, what fun that was having contrast shoved up my arse that made me puke my brains out an hour later.  Ultrasound showed nothing, CT scan showed a medium sized kidney stone.  The kidney stone could pass on its own, or it could need to be busted up and passed, so the waiting game starts.

Now ER docs are not very well versed in kidney stones, so they shoo you out of there with some expensive name brand scripts and tell you to call a urologist.  Now let's take into account what time of year this is, approaching Turkey day.  Apparently to get an appointment with a urologist within a reasonable amount of time requires either a secret handshake or password.  No one at any urologist's office cares that pain is a 27 on a 1 - 10 scale.  So I was stuck at home in agony, throwing up every half hour, no matter that stomach contents had long since been emptied.  Add in abdominal spasms all over my right side, made getting any rest or any liquids impossible.  The first three days home were spent throwing up and sleeping in 2 hour spurts.  Now mind you, my Mark had to go back to work, so I was left to fend for myself, easier said than done.  So after a few more days I got fed up with being left on my own and packed up to Hospital Mom.

Hospital Mom was a lot better than having a lab/pit mix as a nurse while my husband couldn't be bothered to check in on me.  So after the constant vomiting stopped and I could graduate to Gatorade and toast, the abdominal spasms tried their best to kill me.  ER doc gave me a script for a fistful of pills naively assuming that a urologist would see me in a matter of days.  Thank god I had an emergency stash of pain pills and muscle relaxers that could take down an elephant, but barely did anything for the spasms and agonizing pain.  Happy Turkey day...not!

Let's not forget the pee screen that I was supposed to use.  Maybe a urologist has better pee screens, but since those appointments take weeks to get, I had to attempt to use what they gave me in the ER which was next to impossible.  When your electrolytes are way off and your entire body is seriously malfunctioning where you can barely walk without passing out, peeing into a little screen was no easy task.  Plus everyone told me that passing this stone would be torture.  So I figured I'd know if I passed it or not.

Well over a week later and the pain has simmered to a tolerable level and the spasms have stopped.  I have no clue where this stone is, I don't think I passed it but I don't have a clue in hell.  Hopefully next week's urologist can tell me more and explain why I got this damn stone.

I rarely eat fast food, never drink sugary pop, drink close to a gallon of water a day and have a diet that's not loaded with calcium.  Why I got a kidney stone is beyond me.  Hopefully this is the one and only time I'll have to suffer with this and I'm crossing my fingers that the urologist will have some answers.