i am in hell

I’ve been quiet over the last few days because I’ve been really, really sick. Like in and out of emergency rooms sick. Diagnosis: kidney stones.

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to have been afflicted with this malady, you’ll probably cringe and say “ouch” and pity me. If you haven’t, its a sensation something like having a rather large scarab beetle trying to scratch its way out of your lower abdomen. I’ve heard that its the worst pain the human body can endure, and that includes childbirth. I can’t vouch for the childbirth part myself, but its definitely the worst pain I’ve ever had. Very painful. Really painful. Big time. With that much pain you get frightening side effects: nausea, chills, fevers, disorientation, hallucinations. Its really not a lot of fun.

I had a kidney stone a few years back and spent the entirety of the experience in the emergency room being fed painkillers and IV fluids. This time I recognized the pain in the middle of a nice brunch with friends on Saturday and had time to drive myself to the ER and demand morphine before it got really bad. Thus began four days that have been pretty much a blur of doctors and drugs and pain.

The stone finally passed tuesday night and I managed to catch it (I will spare you the yucky details). It is small and black and has sharp edges. I keep expecting it to come out of hibernation, to unroll and extend barbed claws and make chittering noises at me from inside the jar. Horrid nasty little thing.

Right now I am still in recovery; It feels like a large animal picked me up by the side and shook me really hard. And I’ve still got a ton of toxins in my body that my kidney wasn’t able to deal with while the stone was there. And I didn’t get the president I wanted. In short: Nothing is going right for me this week at all, and I feel like shit.