The Summer of the Kidney Stone

Image - dinodaloo.blogspot.com

Kidney stones kind of took over my summer, and admittedly the 2nd part of the saga was partly my own fault.

I've already written the beginning of the story in a couple of other post. The pain started when I was at Camp Thanks a Lot with Emily and then I ended up in the ER right before our Michigan trip.

When I was in the ER, they told me there was another stone just hanging out. I kind of forgot about it after the whirlwind Michigan trip, though I did go off soda and started drinking a lot of water and lemonade. I had read that sometimes lemonade can cause stones to reduce in size.

I made it about a month and a half before stone number #2 started its' journey. I had been working and all of a sudden, I had intense pain in my side again. I still had medicine from the ER, so I got logged out of work and took the medicine.

It didn't stay down, so I tried again, and again, I was unable to keep it down. It was a Saturday and Todd and Emily had been out shopping. Once they got home, we were off to the ER again. And it was the 2nd stone - they gave me medicine and another prescription and sent me home to call a urologist on Monday.

This stone was different and the pain didn't go away. I started a cycle of pain, take medicine, go to sleep once the pain was a little less, then wake up and start it again. It was wretched. I got an appointment for Tuesday, and the urologist gave me some options. The main option was to have a procedure done that would break up the stone so I could pass it, but the machine that did that was only available on Mondays.

So home I went again to go through the pain cycle. And it was only a day or two after that I got a call from the office that the break up procedure wasn't an option and I would have to have surgery to get the mega awful stone out. And I'd have to have a stent in for a couple of days.

While I was pretty upset by this news, I was also really ready to not be in horrible pain anymore. Thankfully, as the week went on, the stone moved some so the pain was much more bearable. Todd took the day off and he and Emily went with me to the hospital to have surgery. Surgery went fine, though I really hated the stent. Totally annoying and by the end, it was painful.

Also surgery took place a week and a half before Dragon Con. We still went to the con, and I'll get into how this effected my con when I write my recap posts.

Todd and Emily were great while I was dying of kidney stones. And they even got me a bear - they gave it to me after I woke up from surgery.

As of now, I'm trying to be as proactive as possible. My urologist is having me do some tests to figure out how to avoid the formation of stones in the future. My stone was strangely formed and chances are I'll have to go on medicine and cut down on my salt intake.

I'll do it, even though I love salt. I don't want to go through that again. Kidney stones are more painful than childbirth!