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The only reason I’m able to type this is an adequate dose of pain meds…lol
Heh. What a day. I wasn’t feeling well Monday night, with dullish pain in my lower left back. It felt vaguely familiar, so I just ignored it (I have a high pain tolerace). I went to work and felt like crap all day, having to limp/walk bent over till I left.
Don Lemon: “I wish everyone could feel what I feel”
I then sucked it up to do a segment on the Michelangelo Signorile Show to talk about Don Lemon‘s chat with him during the prior hour. I was on about 20 minutes and had a great discussion with Mike about the commonalities Don and I shared re: colorism, the black/gay phenomenon as well as the double minority status when among non-POC LGBTs. We also touched upon Don’s new status of role model (like it or not, if you’re on major media, it’s bestowed upon you in this age of celebrity), and why other closeted people in his industry choose not to come out.
Anyway, I’m sure Mike will have the interview up soon; Mike has the interview up; it’s well worth taking in; Don Lemon is very candid and his personal revelations have clearly lifted a burden off of his shoulders.
***
So the second half of the story – Kate gets home as I finished up with Mike and I’m having trouble getting up from the floor of our spare bedroom (I usually do the show in there, sitting cross-legged on the floor since it’s quiet). The pain was getting pretty excruciating (maybe a 7 out of 10). I (stupidly) have some chicken soup because I hadn’t eaten, and we went to urgent care.
After a not-too-long wait (45 min, which is an eternity as the kidney stone is scraping around), we went into the patient suite. The doctor, seeing my history of two prior kidney stone attacks and my description of my current pain, agrees with me that it’s likely another stone (there were some high up in the kidney after the last attack in 2008; one must have moved down). So no CT scan or X-Ray, no morphine, for crying out loud.
I left after receving a shot of Toradol in my bum (muscle relaxer), and an anti-nausea pill. We had to wait 20 minutes to see if there was pain reduction. Sadly, it didn’t do much of anything. So she wrote me a 12-pill script for Vicodin. Hopefully the stone will pass in a couple of days. The pain is always the worst just as it scrapes its way out, so I’m not looking forward to that. Until then, lots of clear fluids, lights out and fetal position for me.
8 Comments
hope for a quick passno good feeling like someone is inside jabbing with an icepick. i hope your kidneys are cleared soon!
only time i had morphine was hanging out in the emergency room with kidney stones – had a friend coming in from out of town for a july 4 party at my house that day, needless to say someone else had to take over.
Sorry You’re Going Through All ThatI hope you feel better soon.
Take care for your blood sugar on that clear liquid diet.
I had my first kidney stone not long after I moved to Denver.At first I just thought it was something wierd my muscles were doing in that area that would go away since I’m used to that kind of thing. I went to the emergency room, and when they put me in the MRI machine, I couldn’t help laughing about my grandmother’s last MRI. First she says at breakfast, “I don’t know what I can eat that I won’t get sick when they whirl me around” then later tells an old friend of hers “I just got back from having my head examined”. That was a much needed bit of levity. But I digress. It took about four days to pass, but with the vicodin, it wasn’t too bad. I did get nauseous a lot though. Of course my mother tells me that kidney stones are one of the few things more painful than childbirth. Hopefully if I ever have more I’ll follow her pattern and not have the next one till I’m fourty-two.
I was waiting for the morphineBut I was in an urgent care place rather than the ER this time. I had an IV with saline and a hit of morphine when in the ER and it killed the pain pronto. Toradol didn’t do jack.
I don’t know why inadequate pain management is the standard; if passing a kidney stone is often known as worse than childbirth, how on earth do they think muscle relaxant alone will keep one out of excruciating pain while trying to pass a stone over a few days?
I’ll make use of the 12 vicodin and hope it passes in 2-3 days.
Isn’t there an “Old Wives Tale”……that kidney stones are primarily caused by beer and milk? Not to intimate that you’re an “old wife,” by any means.
That, and I just don’t see you as the beer ‘n’ milk type… Unless you also like tractor pulls.
I’m going to stop now… Seeing as how I’ve now dug myself into a hole I’ll never get out of!
Feel better, Hon!!!
Oh Pam My Sister In Pain ….Not a good year for either of us so far between my hip, your fibro and now stone.
I had and passed on back in 1999 so I know what you’re going through. I said to different nurses when at Yale for the hip and when we got into conversations about pain, as much pain as I was in at the beginning of the hip dislocation and it was excruciating when the leg was moved the wrong way (usually during x-ray or cat scans) it still doesn’t compare to the pain of a kideny stone.
That shot you got in the bum, when I got mine I swore the needle was going through one cheek and out the other but it did kill the pain for me. After that perscription meds (to be honest I forget now which one but potent) worked for the six days it took to pass the stone and I caught it and still have it. I always said when I win the lottery I’m going to have a glass dome ring made with the stone in it and an inscription that reads “remember what pain is”.
Hang in there and just try to find a comfortable spot to sit. I found (the pain was in my left side) that sitting on our couch with the left side up against the armrest and holding a pillow across my lap became a confortable position even enough to fall asleep.
Good luck kid …. okay who’s next out there .. everything runs in threes.
O’s & X’s
Lyndon
thanks, LyndonAs you said “remember what pain is.” My last two stones I turned over to the doctors for analysis, so I didn’t have them to keep as a reminder. LOL.
However, as I said in the post, the start of that feeling was so familiar that I knew it couldn’t be anything else. I usually hit the 10 out of 10 on the pain scale with a kidney stone, but this got up to about an 8, thankfully, before I got the pain under control.
Now it’s all about drinking fluids, waiting, and keeping the pain in check. I have enough pain meds to last two days, three if I’m conservative and bear some pain.
Heal up yourself!
ToradolToradol is not a muscle relaxant, it is an NSAID (like ibuprofen or naproxen) and is adequate for many types of moderate pain. That being said, I agree that it is inappropriate analgesia for a kidney stone, which as you noted is often compared to the pain of childbirth. I hope you pass the stone soon and your pain is better controlled with the vicodin.