So, on Tuesday, I was over at my parents’ house taking a nap. Around 3:30 PM, I woke up because of some kind of pain in my abdomen. I though I just had to take a leak, so I went to do that, but didn’t have much luck. Some time passed, and the pain was getting worse, and I thought I s]]>

<![CDATA[hould try defecating, but again didn’t have much luck. I waited awhile as the pain worsened further, and thought, if this hasn’t cleared up by the time my parents come home, I will talk to them about it (they are both medical doctors).

By 4:30, I knew there was no way I could wait until 6ish for them to come home, so I called my dad and explained the problem: I had some kind of pain in my belly, hard to describe, mostly in my right-front side. It was enough to wake me up an hour ago, and had only gotten worse in the meantime. Because unknown abdominal pain can turn life-threatening in a very short amount of time, he suggested that he should come home early and take me to the emergency room to find out what was wrong. I agreed, and after a few minutes of mentally pumping myself up, I stood up to go downstairs to get my shoes & glasses. I made it to the hallway before I had to start crawling, and by the time I got to the top of the stairs, I collapsed, writhing in pain.

My dad found me a few minutes later and helped my down the stairs. I have never felt pain like that in my whole life – it felt like I had been kicked in the testes at the same time someone had stabbed me in the side and twisted the knife. I do remember the drive to the hospital, but mostly because I was going back and forth between moaning and screaming the whole time.

My dad gave his medical opinion as a kidney stone, based on the fact that I had pain in my groin in addition to my belly, and that during the drive, small bumps didn’t seem to make it hurt additionally (in cases of appendicitis, jostling – like when you go over a curb in a car – makes the pain much worse).

This came up when I googled “kidney stone.” I don’t know why.

At the ER, I don’t remember a whole lot about checking in other than that I was hyperventilating and when they sat me down to take my blood pressure, I nearly broke the swinging arm of the chair from gripping it too hard. They lay me down on a bed and gave me IV pain meds (Dilaudid) and also an anti-inflammatory and something else (I don’t remember what). After that kicked in, they asked me to rate my pain, and I remember saying it was down to about a 7 on the 1-10 scale posted on the wall – distressing, but no longer unbearable. I remember asking who the nurse was who gave me the pain meds, and saying to him, “Thank you.” It was very important for me to do that at the time – I’m sure it was partly the drugs, but I remember thinking, THIS is who deserves the credit for my feeling better right now, and it was important to me that he knew it. I don’t remember if or how he responded, since I was kinda out of it.

The doctor saw me a little later and ordered a CT to positively rule out appendicitis, and to confirm a kidney stone. They gave me some more pain meds and wheeled me off for the CT, which confirmed a kidney stone. Around 8:30, they sent me home with a prescription for Percocet, one for an anti-nausea medication, and another for a medication called Flomax, which is usually prescribed for prostate-cancer patients – it helps loosen the abdomen to make passing the stone easier. They also gave me a thing that looked like a funnel with a screen in the bottom, with instructions to urinate into it each time I had to go, in order to catch the stone, so they could analyze it after I passed it.

A lot of human behavior makes more sense when you keep in mind that for much of our evolutionary history, food was scarce. We hunted when we could, and ate whatever we could find before other animals got to it. Whether that food was spoiled or not was a secondary concern. The purpose of the anti-nausea medication was explained to me this way: Apparently, our bodies respond to abdominal pain by saying, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on; better vomit just in case in was bad food.” I didn’t sleep at all that night, but I did manage to vomit up the first two Percocet I took (3 hours apart), as well as the anti-nausea medication and the Flomax. I’m estimating I vomited about 15-20 times that night, and was unable to keep down any water either, which – along with the vomiting itself – makes it rather difficult to work up enough urine to pass a kidney stone. The next morning (Wednesday), the pain was just as bad as the day before (since I couldn’t keep down any pain meds), and my dad took me back to the hospital so they could give me pain medication and some fluids via IV.

Since I was so dehydrated, they were unable to find a vein, and they had to stick me in the bicep. They eventually got the pain meds going and gave me two bags of saline, too. As it turned out, the reason I was in so much pain was that the kidney stone got stuck – I was too dehydrated to pass it, so they decided to remove it surgically.

Now, here’s the fun part. This is how you remove a lodged kidney stone: First, they put you under general anesthesia. Then, using a scalpel, they cut the opening at the tip of the penis open a little wider, so they can snake a flexible, tube-like instrument up your urethra. The instrument has a camera at the end, and a tool for grabbing the stone once they find it. They snake this device up your penis, find the stone, then reverse course and back it all the way out. Then they snake the instrument back up there and put in a stent (a little plastic tube thingie) and install this in your kidney where the stone was, to keep the blood flowing while your body heals. The stent stays there for about a week. Then you come back to the hospital, they put you under again, and repeat the process with the scalpel and the snaking instrument, and finally take the stent out.

When you wake up from this, the tip of your penis is bleeding and you have to urinate (since they’ve beeng giving you IV fluids this whole time). They tell you there will be blood in your urine, and that’s normal. So you get up to go pee, and you can look forward to that very same stabbing pain in your lower back, in addition to an unbelievably painful burning when you urinate – that’s the uric acid flowing over the cut in the tip of your penis. “Blood in your urine” is an understatement; it looks like you’re pissing straight blood, and feels like it, too. The same happens the next two or three times you go to the bathroom, until the tip heals. After that, it doesn’t burn from the acid anymore, but the feeling of being stabbed in your kidney is still there every time you go to the bathroom.

When I see it feels like you’re being stabbed in your back, I mean that every time you take a piss, even with pain meds, your kidney hurts such that for the next 45 minutes or so, you can barely stand up. There’s really nothing you can do about it except wait it out, and take pain meds. I’ve developed an aversion to drinking over the past few days and have had to force myself to remember to drink water so I don’t dehydrate again. I’ve lost about 8 pounds since this started, I’m guessing mostly water, although I’ve also only eaten two small meals total since Tuesday AM (it’s now Sunday AM).