The Saga of the Stone(s....)

And we all thought i was gonna have that baby early.

Pshhh!

Turns out, those were not contractions.  No, my friends, those were KIDNEY STONES.  8 mm in diameter and three of them "lodged in my ureter" because they had been there for so long. 

Last July, I had some seriously serious pain in my right side.  I was six months pregnant, and after an ultrasound of my kidneys that revealed nothing, i was diagnosed with pre-term labor and put on strict bed rest.  3 months of doing nothing but laying in bed, getting up only to shower and sit on the toilet....and occasionally brush my teeth.  What??  it's not like i was going anywhere.

Bedrest did the trick.  The pain went away, and that baby did not come early.  Not even after i hiked a mountain 40 weeks pregnant.  Nope.  She wan't budging.  I must have an awesome womb. :)  So when Lorelei arrived late, i wondered if maybe i'd rested in my bed a little too much.  I mean, not only was she late, but she wouldn't even come out when the contractions were pushing her.  The doctor had to go in and take her...via C-section.  The great part about a C-section is the delivery. I didn't feel a thing.  The not so great part about a C-section is the recovery.  I felt something then.  OUCH.

So....four months pass, and i am surprised by the EXACT SAME PAIN i had when i was pregnant.  What is this???  I can't be having contractions now!!!  I'm not pregnant!!  Why is this pain back???  And it was back with a vengeance.  It sent me all the way to the ER where, after some tests, the doctor said something to me i'll never forget:

"You are as full of feces as a human being can be.  In fact, the radiologist even made a note of it."  

Great.  I'm full of poop.  And the radiologist knows too.  Before long the whole hospital will be talking about that poop-loaded patient in room 6.  Not exactly what i had in mind when i was little and dreaming of being famous.

So the doc sends me home with a bottle of nasty stuff for me to drink.  This "stuff" will cause my bowels to completely empty and i will be pain free.  Hah.  Only half of that statement was true.  The bowels, they did empty (not fun).  But guess what happened one month later???

PAIN.  In my right side.  What time is it???  4 am.  Maybe i'm just imagining things...maybe if ignore it, it will go away.  Riiiiiiiight.  An hour later i'm writhing and extremely frustrated with the whole scenario.  Seriously???  I'm not having contractions, and there's no way i can be full of poop AGAIN!  i had been taking the proper procedures to prevent that, and things were running smoothly (no pun intended).

I decided to take the meds the doc had prescribed just in case i might have future pains.  BAD IDEA.  Now, not only was i experiencing intense and unrelenting pain; i was completely nauseated.  I felt that i would be tossing my cookies any minute.

What to do, what to do?  I have a husband at work and a baby who will be waking up hungry, and there's no way i can hold her, much less nurse her, in my current condition.

Call mom. 

Thank God for parents....for wonderful, loving, caring, helpful parents living close by.  My mom came up, saw the condition i was in, fed the baby a bottle, and drove the 3 of us to the doctor's office.  My dad met us there.  From the doctor's office to the ER, to the CT scan, and to the bed where i lay in agony until that blessed nurse finally pumped me full of morphine.

I had my knees pulled up to my chest and was rocking back and forth in pain, but when that morphine hit me, my whole body relaxed.  Finally.  No pain.  That's all i wanted.  Just for someone to make that pain go away before i went crazy.  And i was on the verge....of losing it.  Ceaseless pain for 7 straight hours makes you want to scream and throw things.  But of course, i knew that wouldn't help, and so i didn't.  I just cried.  A lot.

And the result of that CT scan?  KIDNEY STONES.  Not contractions, not poop, but kidney stones.  Nasty little bugers.  For the record let me just say it,  I HAVE BEEN IN LABOR AND I HAVE ENDURED KIDNEY STONES.  THE STONES ARE WORSE.

So from the ER we journeyed to the Urologist, and finally to the hospital where i spent the night hooked to an IV and a morphine drip.  Best sleep i've had in a LOOOOONNGG time.  The next morning, they briefed me, and then sent me back for surgery.  I told my mom and my husband goodbye, and was rolled away for the procedure.

Having never been put to sleep before, i was a little nervous.  However, that sleep now trumps the previously stated sleep as the best sleep of my life.  I woke up feeling refreshed, and was immediately offered a Dr. Pepper by the nurse...I could get used to that!  I drank TWO of them ( i was thirsty and my throat hurt from that breathing tube someone had carelessly SCRAPED up and down my throat).

But back to the operating room.  I remember laying there (or is it lying?), and telling them about my nerves.  The nurse covered me with a warm blanket, and the anesthesiologist told me he was giving me something to help me relax.  If by relax he meant "pass out completely and remember nothing," then he sure did his job well.  All i remember is holding on to that warm blanket and being moved from my bed to the operating table....and a faint vision of an oxygen mask being placed over me.  While i was sleeping peacefully, the doctor went in with a scope and a laser.  He blasted those 8 mm pain inflictors and removed them from my body.  I'm still amazed that he lasered the stones and only the stones.  It's not like he had a large space to work in.  Ureters aren't exactly large and roomy.  Modern medicine baffles me.  In a good way.

It was about an hour before i was awakened and happily sipping that Dr. Pepper and thinking about all the good sleep i'd gotten since i'd been at the hospital.  After making sure i was recovering well, and not acting funny or having any other problems, i was sent home with a plastic cup holding a small sample of one of my stones.  The Urologist will send it away to be tested to see if there might be a clue as to what caused the stones in my kidney.

But if you ask me, i'll tell you i'm 100% sure it was pregnancy induced.  I don't believe i was having preterm labor.  I had kidney stones.  The poop thing...who knows?  Maybe i was backed up, but i don't believe poop causes THAT kind of pain.  It was the kidney stones, and AT LAST i am free of them.