About a month ago I learned the "stones" were
getting back together. No... not Keith
and Mick. Heck, not even Fred and
Wilma. I'm talking renal calculus baby,
or everyone's favorite bodily concretion... kidney stones. Now your first reaction may be to wince. I don't blame you. My butt puckered at first, too. It seemed that everyone I shared my diagnosis
with had either had kidney stones (and it was the worst pain imaginable) or
they knew someone who had suffered through them (and it was the worst pain
imaginable). I prepared as best I
could. I turned to the internet.
I found several online resources to guide my journey. My favorite were the firsthand accounts. Most of which were written by the
semi-literate crowd you're most likely to encounter while skimming Amazon.com's
well thought out product reviews (or anything ever written by Ann Coulter). You know... people with absolutely nothing to
say and absolutely no skill in saying it. Ah the internet... the great equalizer.
..."the Fleshlight
I purchased from you is substandard in every conceivable way..."
In that spirit, I've decided to contribute my firsthand account... the highlights
of my kidney stone adventure. So take
THAT interwebs (and remember, no one is making
you read this)...
I opted for a procedure called LITHOTRIPSY. Litho comes from the Greek word
"litho" meaning "stone" and the mobster term "tripsy" meaning "to smash
the shit out of". For my surgery, I
was knocked out with a general anesthetic.
For the next 90 minutes, a small sound wave was shot into my kidney in
an effort to bust up the stones. As far
as I know, all the doctor did was invite ex-girlfriends into the operating room
to kidney punch me for an hour, leaving 30 minutes for them to laugh at the
size of my penis. Either way, the
results were the same... I soon started to pass small fragments of stones through an unwelcome combination of pain and humiliation.
After the surgery, I was given pain medication.
This made me as sick as a dog... so it was immediately stopped. We're going to ride this one out baby.
I was also given medication to "help things
along". In a rare instance of
medical and marketing synergy, this medicine was called FLOMAX. The thinking being... now that these little
buggers are smashed up, let's get them to flow out of the body as quickly and easily as
possible. It only took 4 days to
realize that this medicine was the cause of the 3 and a half day migraine I had
been suffering. Good thing I had pain
meds to get me through... oh wait. Crap!
There's no easy way to say this next one. But basically, I didn't poop for 120 hours. There is a silver lining
though. Now that I've started, I don't
seem able to stop.
Over the next month, I'm supposed to strain my urine. In preparation, I asked my wife if she had a colander she
wasn't fond of. Apparently, she's fond of them all (good news though... Friday is still pasta
night at our house). Over the first few
days I've collected many small stones.
The doctors have cute names for them like "gravel" and
"sand". Once I've gathered them
all, I'm thinking of commemorating this event with a small zen garden.
anybody got a rake?
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