Friday, August 4, 2023

Stay Hydrated

The choices are:

1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Take an ambulance to the emergency room and learn first hand how painful a kidney stone can be.

I chose poorly. May you learn from my mistake.

The good news is that the 4.5mm kidney stone that was causing me so much pain passed within 10 hours of the first symptoms, the pain medication given in the ER was quite effective, and the stone was smooth so once it exited my kidney, the pain was gone. No jagged spikes, thankfully. Not everyone is so fortunate.

The bad news is that the other kidney has 3 similar ticking time bombs and one of them is 6mm. Yikes!

Why an ambulance you might ask? Seemed warranted given the extreme pain and the fact that I was throwing up like a machine gun. 2 bursts of 4! And with such force that my ribs hurt when laughing or coughing for 4 full days thereafter.

6 comments:

  1. Kidney stones are no joke. I hope the time bombs in the other kidney pass easier when they go.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a nightmare. Sorry you had to endure that.

    Can they break up the other time bombs with ultrasonic?

    I'm picturing the asteroid field in the Empire Strikes Back.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Will be contacting a urologist on Monday. A friend has a similarly sized kidney stone and his urologist does not want to bombard it with sonic death rays unless absolutely necessary. *shrug*

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hahaha!

    Patient: I have a stabbing pain in my right eye every time I drink tea.
    Doctor: Take the spoon out first.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My daughter (a long time ago) had a kidney stone when she was only around 9. I think she handled the pain better than I did.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 6mm feels like 6cm for the participant.

    Regards,
    Rob Dawg

    ReplyDelete