March 2015 -
The night after I returned from Hong Kong I started feeling terrible. By terrible I mean that I had the most terrible pain in my left lower back that I've ever had in my life. I was also feeling like I was getting a urinary tract infection. By 5 o'clock Monday morning I was ready to go into the ER, because the pain was so bad. I was convinced that I had a kidney infection.
The doctor sent me home with antibiotics and nurofen for pain (basically ibuprofen). All day Monday turned out to be awful. Such bad pain all day with my neighbor, April, bringing me pain
meds leftover from her daughter's cancer. I took oxycodone and it didn't even help with the pain. (To give you an idea of how bad the pain was...I actually said a swear word that I've never even said during childbirth. Freaking major pain!)
By Monday afternoon April convinced me that I needed to go back to the ER. My friend Carrie drove me and I was admitted this time and put on morphine for the pain. Then I was taken off to get x-rays. That's when the vomiting started. Actually, the vomiting started earlier in the day. I vomited 3 times at home before going into the ER.
I was given a medication (not sure of name) that helps move kidney stones. It forces them out. So all night I was up going to the bathroom every few hours checking the toilet and hoping that the thing would come out. If it didn't come out during the night then a specialist would come by in the morning and use a tool to blast the stone into thousands of pieces to make it come out easier. Mike slept in the hospital room with me so when I went to the bathroom early in the morning I saw something at the bottom of the toilet. It looked like a little black rock so I asked Mike if he could check and see if it was a stone. I actually thought that the bottom of the toilet was just stained black but I was still hopeful that it could be the kidney stone. Well, Mike reached down into the toilet and retrieved it and it was the kidney stone! Crazy! We put it on a paper towel and I couldn't believe it was black. Gross?! I thought that kidney stones were clear, crystal looking stones. However, this looked like a stone you would find at the beach. When the specialist doctor came in at 7:00am he was surprised to see that we had the stone. He even took photos of it.
The only good part of this experience was when my sweet friend Sarah Nelson dropped by with a phone charger for me, some socks for my freezing cold hospital feet and my very favorite Easter candy - Cadbury chocolates.
I really hope I don't have to go through this ordeal again. I'm grateful for good friends who helped me through this. Kidney stones are no joke!
(March 2015)
