The Family Stone

I had set my alarm for 7:00AM on Friday morning as I had to get to the airport to pick up some clients. At 6:30AM, I woke up with some cramping in my lower back. We have been playing football on the beach the last several days and I thought the cramping was because I’m getting too old to be tackled in the sand. This maybe true, but wasn’t the reason I was hurting. So I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and took a shower. The cramps became pain and slowly moved around my side into my lower abdomen. I woke Angie and told her something was wrong with me. I tried laying down, walking around and just sitting still, but nothing would help. Angie called David to stay with the kids. She called Pinu to collect the clients from the airport and I curled up in a fetal position on the living room floor waiting to go to the hospital. After several calls to people with cars, I finally said, “I’m walking!” She and David both said, “Yeah right, you cant even stand up.” The car came and took us to the hospital. It didn’t take the doctor long to diagnose my problem. He left me in the observation room for 4 hours before taking me to the “scan” room. Just before they admitted me, they took me to the “scan” room. The scan room was where the broken x-ray machine lived and the antiquated sonogram machine was. I laid down on this table with me legs hanging a foot off the end (I’m a bit taller than most of their patients.) After some discussion on how to use the machine, the two doctors managed to fire it up and take few pictures of my bladder, prostate, and kidneys. I kept thinking to myself, “Is this just a bad dream?” “Are they supposed to use this machine on men?” “This gel stuff they keep squirting on me is getting on my shirt.” Unfortunately it was not a dream. What was happening to me was all too real. I think all the nurses were pretty excited about the scan as many of them came into the room to watch. I was in a lot of pain but was still trying to make jokes. I thought laughing would keep me form saying something I would regret…. it worked, well part of the time. At one point I made a comment about my bladder being full and the female doctor and two or three nurses laughed like a bunch of school girls. After 3 IV bottles, 7 litters of drinking water and 8 hours of labor pains, I finally gave birth to a brand new baby kidney stone. He’s a cute little guy. We haven’t decided which four letter word to name him yet, but we are thinking either PAIN or OUCH. The doctor required me to stay in the hospital until 7PM on Saturday. I took lots of antibiotics and some other medicine that works a lot like something you would put in your gas tank to clean the injectors on your car. Its supposed to clean out any other stones or “sludge” that might be in kidneys. The doctors and nurses were very kind and my friends came to see me too. Nasha brought Karumba at 11:30PM on Friday night. (Karumba is the young coconut that is a cure all in the islands.) She cut it open and I drank it out of the coconut shell right there in my hospital room. Arey showed up at 12:30AM and stayed until 1AM or so. Braden stayed with me overnight. This experience definitely goes in my top painful experiences…. I still think I would put Dengue fever at the top of the list, but passing a kidney stone is a close second. I took a picture of the little guy. I’d post the picture, but all the comments would be, “That little guy? That doesn’t look like it would be all that painful.” So I’m just going to let you imagine. Well I am OK now. Just my whole weekend was blown and I had to stay in the hospital the whole time. I guess the ironic part of the story is that when I was finally released, I walked home from the hospital.