Slight change in plans in what I was going to write about tonight.\u00a0 A change to both the subject and the venue.\u00a0 Instead of writing about Trump and Empathy from my writing Starbucks, let’s talk about kidney stones from my garage.<\/p>\n
I’ve talked about kidney stones before, but they’ve always been after the fact.\u00a0 Right now, as I’m writing this, I’ve got some intense pain in my lower back on the right side.\u00a0 It might not be a kidney stone, but it feels a lot like how all of the others have started.\u00a0 And over the last 17 years, I’ve become something of a subject matter expert.<\/p>\n
Tonight, I’ve taken some precautions.\u00a0 I’ve contacted Melissa to warn her that I may be having a bad night.\u00a0 I came home from Starbucks as soon as I knew what was going on.\u00a0 I drank a bunch of water.\u00a0 I’ve taken an old Vicodin left over from a previous kidney stone.\u00a0 I’m staying ahead of the pain.\u00a0 I’m not nauseous yet.\u00a0 If the Vicodin is still good, and it takes effect before I get nauseous, I might not have to go to the E.R.<\/p>\n
Kidney stones are terrible.\u00a0 They really, really are.\u00a0 And like I said, I’ve been through this quite a bit.<\/p>\n
How many times have I altered my diet in order to avoid kidney stones?\u00a0 Too many.\u00a0 I gave up soda and caffeine.\u00a0 For a while, I was only drinking water for a beverage, even though water alone made me miserable.<\/p>\n
Let’s talk about the pain a little bit, while I’m going through some of it.<\/p>\n
It always starts off subtle.\u00a0 It doesn’t feel like anything more than bad gas at first.\u00a0 When I arrived at Starbucks tonight, I thought I might have sat in my chair wrong all day.\u00a0 There was a mild discomfort in my lower back, like a muscle cramp.\u00a0 I rubbed and stretched while I walked in and placed my order.<\/p>\n
When I sat down, the pain ratcheted up a notch.\u00a0 On the pain scale, it went from a 1 to a 3.\u00a0 That’s when I started to get a suspicion that it wasn’t a muscle cramp or bad gas.<\/p>\n
For me, the worst part about kidney stone pain is its merciless persistence.\u00a0 It’s never felt like a stab wound or anything so sharp.\u00a0 It feels more like pressure.\u00a0 The pressure escalates into a deep, low pain, and then it just sits there.\u00a0 It doesn’t decrease.\u00a0 It doesn’t subside, regardless of whatever position you put yourself in.\u00a0 Walking doesn’t help.\u00a0 Throwing up doesn’t help.\u00a0 Eventually, the body starts vomiting because it doesn’t know what else to do.\u00a0 The cold feel of the bathroom linoleum on your cheek doesn’t help, nor does the cold, smooth surface of the toilet bowl.<\/p>\n
If you didn’t get the context clues, I’ve spent a lot of time in bathrooms while trying to deal with kidney stone pain.<\/p>\n
The first stone, I didn’t know what was happening, and I fought it for hours.\u00a0 I resisted the torture.\u00a0 But eventually I broke and let Melissa take me to the hospital.<\/p>\n
The second stone, I recognized it for what it was.\u00a0 I was at one of my son’s little league games.\u00a0 I was assistant coach, and I was out near third base.\u00a0 The pressure turned to pain fast.\u00a0 So fast, they had to help me off the field.<\/p>\n
Tonight’s is the 6th or 7th stone.\u00a0 It’s hard for me to keep track, now.\u00a0 It started to hit hard, like the second stone had, but I think I got to the Vicodin in time.\u00a0 I’m still really uncomfortable, but the pain is at a manageable level.\u00a0 I don’t think I’ll need to prostrate myself before the toilet.\u00a0 Unless I’m misjudging what’s going on with my body right now, I think I’ll be okay tonight.<\/p>\n
If I’m correct about this being a stone, this may be the second time I’ve gotten to the Vicodin in time.\u00a0 Most of the rest of the stones came on at very inconvenient times.\u00a0 One of them hit me while I was driving to work.\u00a0 I’d just hit rush hour traffic, and the highway was backed up worse than usual, and suddenly the pain was just there.\u00a0 I had a really hard time driving.\u00a0 I called ahead to work, and I called Melissa.\u00a0 By the time I got to work, I was drenched from both sweat and tears.\u00a0 David took me to the hospital and Melissa met me there.<\/p>\n
A few people think that the stone hurts leaving the body.\u00a0 As in, they think it’s worse for men because of the penis being involved.\u00a0 The truth is, the urethra is the largest tube involved in the entire urination process.\u00a0 Once the stone reaches my bladder, I don’t notice it again.\u00a0 There’s no pain or discomfort from that point forward.<\/p>\n
There’s something that happens during and after every kidney stone.\u00a0 I’m going through it right now.\u00a0 I keep asking myself, “What could I have done to prevent this?\u00a0 What did I do wrong?”<\/p>\n
In a couple of cases, I might have brought the pain on myself because of my diet.\u00a0 Being a little dehydrated is bad for people susceptible to kidney stones, and when Cataclysm came out, I spent about three days straight playing World of Warcraft.\u00a0 I didn’t drink enough during that time.\u00a0 I’d been\u00a0having fun at the time, but the kidney stone made it not worth it.<\/p>\n
After the second stone, I thought it was because I’d been eating a bunch of shelled peanuts a day or two before.\u00a0 With the third stone, I’d had a handful of pistachios.\u00a0 With the first stone, I’d been pounding vitamin C in order to try and muscle my way through flu season.<\/p>\n
The truth is, with the exception of the dehydration, there’s probably nothing I could have done differently to avoid these stones.\u00a0 After the last MRI, my doctor pointed out several stones floating in my kidneys, waiting for their time to shine.\u00a0 Some people just produce stones.\u00a0 I’m probably one of those people.<\/p>\n
Writing about it right now is helping.\u00a0 Even after Vicodin, anything a person can do that is a constructive distraction is a good thing.<\/p>\n
But unfortunately, I’m running out of things to say on this subject.\u00a0 I feel bad enough, because I know I’ve talked about kidney stones on this blog before.\u00a0 Much of what I had to say tonight is a repeat from previous entries, and I hate to repeat myself.<\/p>\n
I’m sure I’ll use this experience in a story, eventually.\u00a0 Maybe I won’t make it specifically a kidney stone, though.\u00a0 Some kind of abdominal pain that the character has to struggle through, in order to accomplish some kind of task.\u00a0 Pain like this brings things into clarity for me.\u00a0 Reminds me of what is important.\u00a0 I’m sure it would help show the reader the true stuff that makes up one of my characters.\u00a0 It might be useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slight change in plans in what I was going to write about tonight.\u00a0 A change to both the subject and the venue.\u00a0 Instead of writing about Trump and Empathy from my writing Starbucks, let’s talk about kidney stones from my garage. I’ve talked about kidney stones before, but they’ve always been after the fact.\u00a0 Right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}