You know when I said I was sore Sunday night? There were two reasons for that. And those reasons were... Kidney. Stones. I woke up Monday morning about 2:00 with some back pain. I rolled around in bed for a couple of hours trying to find a semi-comfortable position. I gave that up, grabbed our heating pad, sat down on the living room couch and read until the rest of the family got up.
The pain wasn't ALL that bad at first. It was enough to keep me awake, but I was moving around OK. My thought was that I'd go in to work, stay through our 9:00 staff meeting, and then call our doctor for an appointment. My brother has had MANY kidney stones (he's 27 now, his first was when he was 21) so I sorta figured that's what this was. That macho plan of going into work died a flaming death pretty quickly - by 7:00 I was doubled-over in pain and nauseated. After we dropped off our daughter at day-care, KAMommy drove me to the ER.
We were checked in, CT-scanned, and pain meds administered by 8:30. Two stones - one between 4 and 5mm and the other between 2 and 3mm. I could have probably passed the smaller one normally, but the bigger one got stuck and was causing all the pain. I had an appointment with a urologist yesterday afternoon, who scheduled me for a lithotripsy for this morning. I wasn't in bad pain yesterday afternoon, night, or this morning - the big stone had shifted enough to let fluids go by. When it shifted the pain was gone, like somebody flipped a switch.
So this morning was the lithotripsy - which is basically blasting the stones with sound waves until they break up. Now I feel like I've been rabbit-punched in the left kidney, but other than that (and a slight headache) I'm OK. I've got good drugs and they're starting to kick in.