Here’s what happened: last Thursday (a week ago today), around noon-ish, I started feeling. . .yucky. Nothing specific, but very, very tired. In fact, I went to bed and slept for three hours. Very unusual for me. After my youngest got home from school, I took them to the public library, and we left there around 5PM. By then, I was feeling worse, and knew I didn’t feel like making dinner, so I hit the McD’s drive-thru. I got myself a cheeseburger Happy Meal, but by the time I got home, I couldn’t bring myself to eat even a single bite. Also very unusual. By 6PM, I was having some pretty bad pain in the left kidney, and I took some Darvocet. I had a meeting to go to (neighborhood association; I’m the secretary), and was hoping to make it through the meeting, and then decide whether to go to the hospital. By 6:30, though, it simply wasn’t a choice. I had to go to the ER.
ER waiting rooms suck. But I got a great ER doc. He got me hooked up to an IV right away, and got me morphine for pain and Phenergan for nausea. After tests, they found a 4mm stone in the left ureter, as well as a pretty serious infection. They admitted me.
Friday morning, my urologist comes around, and says he’s going to go after the stone with a cystoscope, but doesn’t want to spend too much time fishing for it, because of the infection. At the very least, he says, he’s going to put in a stent to relieve the inflammation of the urinary system (a stent is a bendy wire, folded in half, the is inserted, in this case, into the ureter). So, around noon on Friday, I get general anesthesia. An hour later I wake up. I still have the stone. Now I have a stent, too.
Let me whine about the urethral stent for a moment. The first few times you pee after getting one inserted feels like someone shoving an icepick into your urethra. After that, if you stay well-hydrated, all you get is “stent colic” (real medical term used by my urologist). Peeing itself doesn’t hurt, but by the time you’re half-way done, a sharp pain runs up the inside of your body from your urethra to your kidney. Feels like a kidney stone attack, every single time you pee. Which makes you tempted not to pee, but you know you have to, or things are going to get worse. Waaaaaa.
So yesterday, I found out that he could remove the stent and take out the stone (after which I get another stent; fun. Not) this Friday, except a piece of necessary equipment is in a condition of disrepair, so he can’t do it until next Friday. So, for the next eight days, I’m in a limbo of being half-sick, no appetite, no real desire to do anything except wait for it to be time for more pain meds, limited activity. I can’t drive because of the pain meds. I can’t stop the pain meds because kidney stones fuckin’ hurt!
And it won’t be over a week from tomorrow, either. I’ve been down this road often enough to know that it’ll be a good four days after the surgery before I’m feeling like myself again.
Y’know when I said I don’t feel like doing anything? I lied. What I really feel like doing is feeling sorry for myself. 
Seriously, if I’d saved every kidney stone I’d ever had removed, and had them plated, I could make a tennis bracelet out of them or something. I got my first stone when I was only 15. I was sure I was dying (I could not believe something could hurt that badly and not kill you!!). But when I was younger, I was pretty good at passing them. Now, about 75% of them have to be retrieved. :smack: