It snowed last Monday. There were thunderstorms last Wednesday night. It was 20 degrees and windy on Saturday night while my son slept in the woods with his outdoors class. Spring is a challenging adolescence in Massachusetts, this year even more than most.
WARNING: hospital stories involving bodily functions follow. Proceed at your own risk.
Things have been equally tempestuous around here. Dear Spouse spent six weeks tangling with pneumonia. Six weeks of a cough that would not end, and not sleeping, and, eventually, codeine and lots of antibiotics. Right about when he returned to good health, and just in time for my daughter’s birthday, I developed a kidney stone looking for a way out.
Glamorous, right? We can add kidney stones to the short list of things I never bothered to worry about before but will now think about regularly. I’m one of those people with very high tolerance to pain, yet somehow I found myself crawling on the floor of the ER public restroom when confronted with the agony my kidney created for me. As luck would have it, the ER was packed the day we went in. I spent my time in the waiting room next to a man with blood trickling from beneath the bandages swaddling his head. Occasionally a nurse would come out and ask if he was feeling dizzy or confused.
You know, the usual ER good times.
As luck would have it, a bed eventually opened up in the hall. After changing into a johnny and lounging for a bit with the other hall dwellers, I was whisked away for my first ever CAT scan. Thanks to House, M.D., I knew that I was very likely to die while being scanned, but at that point it was preferable to surviving. The very cheerful technician who introduced me to the machine explained that I would hear a voice telling me to hold my breath, at which point I should…hold my breath. Or, if I couldn’t hold my breath long enough, I could try small shallow breaths.
After laying there for a bit with my arms over my head, I started to think that perhaps I’d missed the voice. Or maybe the speaker was broken. I started to worry about this to the point that I tried to hold my breath a bit, only that didn’t work. Instead, I took the shallowest breaths I could and hoped for the best. I did that up until the point that a voice came from nowhere and told me to hold my breath. Apparently the speakers did work.
Also, I didn’t die during the scan.
I did, however, have to vomit immediately afterward, for approximately the thousandth time since I’d woken up that morning. The cheerful technician, a middle-aged man with a shaved head, stood beside me and patted my shoulder with tiny birdwing taps, a kindness for which I am eternally grateful. And then he told me I should jump back in my traveling hall bed so that they could find my nurse and give me drugs.
I am not a enthusiastic user of pharmaceuticals. I may have had several cavities filled long ago without Novocain. By choice. It’s simply who I am. However, I also found out that I’m someone who will lie in a hall in a johnny for as long as it takes to be given morphine when passing a kidney stone. Even when it requires four tries to hit a vein sufficient for an IV, thanks to my level of dehydration. I will even almost suggest that we skip the anti-nausea meds and go straight to the morphine when the nurse appears with her multiple syringes full of drugs.
IV in, morphine in, anti-nausea drugs in…at the point it seemed ideal to nap. For hours. At some point I was moved to a room, possibly by flights of tiny winged unicorns. It made no difference to me. It may have made a difference to Dear Spouse, who no longer had to stand by my bed in the hall, but could sit and stare at a wall in the room.
The things about kidney stones is that they just have to come out, and mine was small enough that it would come out on its own, so I was sent home with some drugs. Or rather, I was sent to the pharmacy with some prescriptions and lots of bruises and bandaids from all the IV attempts, only to discover that the doctor had an invalid DEA number. Back to the hospital, joining many of the same people in the waiting room, to wait for a new script from a new doctor.
The rest of the story? Not very exciting. The stone that eventually passed was exceptionally small and unimpressive. It only took 24 hours to escape. And then life was back to normal. As normal as this spring has allowed.
April 13, 2016 at 2:43 am
I feel your pain! I had kidney stones that appeared one lunch time at work, left disaster in its wake and a 5 day hospital stay. Not something I recommend. Glad you are feeling better x
April 13, 2016 at 7:03 am
The sheer suddenness is one of the worst parts, I think. Everything is fine and then it isn’t. I’m sorry that yours took so long, and that you had them at all!
April 13, 2016 at 6:59 am
Oh no, and oh no again! Let’s hope that summer is mild and long and leisurely–and your lives similarly wonderful, to make up for this obnoxious spring.
April 13, 2016 at 7:04 am
I’d be quite happy with that, thank you. 🙂
April 13, 2016 at 10:54 am
Worst pain I have ever felt.
April 13, 2016 at 10:59 am
You too? I really would have happily taken five or six labors over that.
April 13, 2016 at 5:12 pm
OWWWWWWWWWWWCH! … glad you’re doing better now.
April 13, 2016 at 9:38 pm
Thank you. 🙂