Sunday night a lot of people were running their fireplaces, so my allergies were pretty bad and I got almost no sleep. I dragged myself into work anyway. The breathing stuff was pretty much better by noontime, but very soon after that a familiar discomfort started building in my abdomen. There is no way to tell for sure just on the symptoms… but the symptoms matched almost exactly what I have felt every time over the past few years when I have been about to pass a kidney stone.
As the afternoon progressed Monday I was increasingly uncomfortable. I thought about leaving early a few times, but ended up putting in a whole day, although I must admit, as the discomfort increased, my productivity declined proportionately. In the evening at home, my discomfort stayed pretty constant for the rest of the night.
Tuesday morning I did a conference call from home first, then headed in to work thinking things weren’t that bad. But during the drive to work it got worse and worse, and I knew as soon as I got there that I would need to turn around and go home. After a couple of quick meetings, I headed home. I managed to do some amount of work from home as long as I stayed in very close proximity to a bathroom at all times.
At about 0 UTC today though, the discomfort spiked into pain… something I had been pretty much been expecting since the initial discomfort on Monday, but had been hoping would not happen. I took a Percocet clone I have around for exactly this reason, and almost immediately I started feeling better, and I did one last conference call with work that lasted about an hour. I had expected that the pill would knock me out and I would sleep the rest of the night. Instead, by the time I got off the call I was feeling no pain at all and was hyperactive. I ended up going downstairs and swaping out a bad head unit on our entertainment system and generally rearranging the room and such.
That lasted until about 5 UTC, then I started feeling uncomfortable again, but I fell asleep. I woke up around 8 UTC. The discomfort slowly started morphing back into pain. About 8:45 UTC it was bad enough that I took another pill. But it just kept getting worse. 20 minutes later, I was about to wake up Brandy to consider the possibility of heading to the ER if the pain meds didn’t kick in soon. At this point it was pretty bad. I was in the curled up in a ball on the floor swearing at the world phase.
I was just starting to feel like the pain killers might have been slightly working when all of a sudden I wasn’t able to keep the pill down. This worried me a lot, because I’ve only ever had to go to the ER for stones twice… once was the very first time, when I had no idea what was going on, and no pain killers to help deal with it… the second was when I couldn’t keep the pain killers down and had to go in so I could get pain killers in a shot instead of in a pill.
At this point Brandy had woken up. I ended up waiting about 10 minutes, then taking another pill, hoping this time I could keep it down. Between whatever part of the first pill had actually stayed in my stomach and the second pill, 20 minutes later I was no longer doing the writhing and swearing thing.
Now, as I write this, it is still pain, not down to just discomfort levels, and I’m not quite at the point where I can sleep. But I think (hope) it might be getting close. I suppose a third pain pill might be possible, but I’m not sure it would be wise. I prefer to take as few of these as possible. (And my supply isn’t all that large anyway.)
This really sucks. I hope this one passes quickly. The last set of tests I had (over the summer) showed all the stones that were sitting in my kidneys ready to drop were still of the size where the indication was take pain killers and pass them rather than lithotripsy or surgery. But the biggest one was getting close to the limit. (I believe they said it was 8mm in diameter… which seems pretty freakin huge to me and would be about double the biggest one I’ve passed previously, but they hoped it would break up into smaller ones on its own.)
So I imagine if this thing doesn’t pass on its own soon… and/or the pain killers stop being enough for me to get by… that a trip to the doctor and/or emergency room may be in my future.
Of course, all this is assuming that because all the symptoms match the other times this has happened to me (which started out being once every couple of years, but is now a couple of times per year) that this is indeed another kidney stone. If it is something else… well, who knows.
As for work tomorrow… I’m gunna try. We have a going away lunch for one of my employees who is leaving for a start up, and it would suck to miss that. Plus a couple of other meetings going on. But if I’m feeling like I do right now, even hopped up on Percocet, I’m thinking that might be unlikely. But I guess we’ll see how I feel in the morning… well, in about 4 or 5 hours when I should be waking up.
No idea at this point if I’ll actually sleep between now and then.
Well, there ya all go. TMI in the extreme I am sure. But at least this time I didn’t post any pictures… yet. :-)
Well, I wish you the best with all of that.
However, definitely TMI. Neither child birth (and especially any more C-section stories) nor kidney stone issues are things I need to know about.
Oh, sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. I’ll be thinking of you — and the rocks stuck in your pecker!
Yeah, thanks and such. I was doing pretty good last night and this morning. But things are flaring up this afternoon. I have a doctor’s appointment in 20 minutes, but they are just going to tell me to take my pain killers again. But at least it will be in my record that I’m having another episode and such.
Two out! Perhaps I’m done for this time around. We shall see.
Any clues as to why you are producing uranium in your system?
Over the past few years I’ve been to four different primary care physicians, three different urologists and one nephrologist (kidney specialist) and none of them have a clue on what is causing it or what to do about it.
The best I’ve gotten are vague dietary guidelines on foods and drinks to avoid or restrict, but the advice each time has been different and contradictory, in some cases with one doctor recommending to have more of some thing and the next one recommending to restrict that same thing.
Bottom line, they don’t know.
The current thing after my most recent Doctor’s appointment a couple days ago is that they are going to send me to a Dietician to get advice on constructing a diet low in oxalates. Judging my the pamphlet they gave me, it looks like that is basically going to involve removing most fruits and vegetables from my diet. Yeah, like that is going to be healthy. (And not like I had huge amounts of those anyway.)
Oh, and all of them tell me I have to drink lots and lots of water. Like take the normal 8 glasses a day they tell everybody to have and add a whole bunch to it. My target is 2 liters a day minimum, but more is better, so I’m trying to actually target more like 2.5.
I’ve always known this particular piece of advice, it has remained constant through all the doctors. I sometimes do better at it, and sometimes do not. I am making a renewed effort by keeping a 1 liter water bottle with me at all times and drinking more or less constantly.