Wednesday, March 19, 2014

the dark crystal

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Nope, not this one....







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...this one.






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This asshole and a bunch of his smaller cronies tortured my husband for 2 weeks. 





It started one Sunday afternoon, in late January. Danny came running up the stairs to lay on the bed next to me, gasping for air and telling me his back hurt really bad. We thought it was a muscle spasm. I've never seen him writhe, sweat and moan in pain before. After an hour or so, he went to the bathroom and then he felt better. TMI (as someone with ongoing intestinal issues, I thought maybe he was just a bit backed up, but nomypoopisjustfineneveraskmeaboutiteveragainhowcouldyouwhy. I've found that people that don't have poop problems are horrified that people that do talk about them! with each other! in public! Hey, just knowing that I'm not alone helps, ok? Geez.)

He had another episode on Wednesday, so I called the Dr and made an appointment, but since he's never been to this particular Dr, we had to wait for a longer appointment time. His appointment was for the next Monday morning.  Then the weekend came. Saturday and Sunday were particularly bad, he was in bed the whole time dying and writhing. He was on the floor half the night, contorting himself into crazy positions trying to crack his back, trying anything to get the spasming to stop. On Sunday night, he said he was having bladder pain, and then I knew it wasn't muscular. It had to be internal. I added the bladder pain to his symptoms, (of course I had been googling) and kidney stones popped up immediately. 

We went to the appointment and after a lot of questions and a pee test, the Dr confirmed my suspicions. (Googling your symptoms isn't always bad) He said that Danny had probably passed stones during each of the episodes, and that the last one must have been larger because there was blood in his urine. He ordered a CT scan and bloodwork. 

We went and got the bloodwork done, and collected the giant jug that he had to pee in for 24 hours (yes, it's as gross as it sounds) The next day we went to the hospital to get the CT scan. Danny was in disbelief. He just thought he was having muscle spasms, and was a bit freaked that we were in a hospital. He got the results that day, (so nice!) and they saw that he still had a 4mm stone left to pass. 

He wasn't too thrilled. The stones form in your kidneys, pass through your ureter, down to your bladder, and then out through, well you know. The ureter is only 3-4mm wide. No wonder he was in so much pain! Having a sharp rock shoved all along your insides, ugggghhhhh! They say it's men's version of childbirth, and I believe it. Except that you never know when it's going to happen. That was the hard part for Danny to deal with, and being an anxiety ridden person, I totally get it. 






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Say hello to our first born, Rocky Horror.

He felt horrible all week. Friday night was particularly bad, I don't think he got much sleep. But Saturday morning came, and Danny yelled at me to come and look- yes, at his pee, but far more importantly, the large stone had passed! And you could see it! Gross!

I told him to save it. He laughed and said ew, no way.


But he did.






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It's a crumb, really. But it's very sharp, all around.

To prevent these sorts of stones forming, you should drink lemon juice in water regularly. But he won't do it. He loooooves lemonade, so I guess that's good enough. He's been drinking it like crazy ever since. 

I'm so glad it wasn't something worse, because there are far worse things than kidney stones. 

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