It’s 3am. I haven’t been sleeping well the past few months. I wake up to a dull pain in my lower back, and I thought to myself “that doesn’t feel right”. I sat up and was instantly met with the most painful thing I’ve ever felt. I immediately rolled out of bed and onto the floor. It was immense.
It honestly felt like I had to poop and pee really bad, but that feeling would come and go. But the. The Freddy Kruger feeling came back. I started to think that this was either the colitis coming back or a kidney stone.
This ensued for the next 2 hours. Just getting worse and worse every 5 minutes. I would transition from the floor, to standing, to walking to on the floor again repeatedly. Not gonna lie, it was worse than the sinus pain. Closer to 6, the wife wakes up. I took some pain meds and just hoped it would calm down.
It did.
Until 4 days later, it was back again. But 100x worse. Between then and now, I wasn’t feeling good. Everything hurt. I had no appetite. So it was basically a replay of last time, except the pain level was through the roof. I ended up waking up the wife. The pain was worsening. I didn’t want to go in again. I fucking hate the ER. Period. Nothing was comfortable. Heating pad, position, posture. Nothing. The pain was worsening again, I took more pain meds. 20 minutes later my body pulled the 5 alarm fire.
I broke out into body sweats and the shakes it felt like I had a fever, but it was low if anything. Then I threw up. I haven’t thrown up in a very long time. My mouth started to just water, and seconds later, there goes my pain meds that would have helped.
I’m in trouble. Started to resonate in my head, and that’s when I told the wife let’s go. This isn’t getting better. Getting into the ER was the usual thing swap masks out for a shitty hospital one, tell the guy checking me in what’s wrong. But I kept feeling like I had to go to the bathroom.
When I got my room, I kept going back in forth from the bathroom. The pain was intensifying. That’s when I was met by probably a good doctor and nurse. I was immediately sent for CT. It took me 10 minutes to get from the gurney to the CT bed. Fuck this was painful. The whole hold your breath thing and don’t move for 15 seconds instructions felt like an almost near impossible task. As they pulled me out of the scanner another person snuck in to help. I accidentally kneed him trying to roll out of the CT scanner. God I was miserable, and I just make some poor guy share in the experience. I’m fucking miserable at this point. I managed to squeeze out a very small amount of urine before I left for CT, cup was gone when I got back.
It’s a kidney stone. 6mm.
The nurse came in. Told me the news. She was actually really nice and helpful for once. Very understanding. IV went in just like my infusions @ the center. It make me happy that I wasn’t gonna get poked 85937393 times. 3 tubes of blood, and yes. Morphine. IV morphine. You are amazing. 30 seconds after the injection I went from a 12 to a 3. I could tell the pain was there but I didn’t care anymore.
Then the doctor came in and told me straight. Elevated bloodwork for Neutrophils and kidney function on top of a really bad UA result:
Blood in urine
Bacteria in urine
White blood cells in urine
Elevated keytones
He then said that this is serious. The stone is basically at the point where it exits to the bladder and is stuck. I was given medication to help relax the muscles in the ureters to hopefully pass the stone. Which is probably not the case for me. I was also given Keflex for a suspected UTI.
They sent me home, but said if I cannot control the pain, that they would admit me to have Urology look at me.
I’m still hurting but I’m just fighting through the pain. I have an appointment next Monday with a urologist to discuss treatment options, I can only assume either break it apart with ultrasound or surgical intervention.
Never a dull moment.
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