Last night for dinner I had a vegetarian and noodle stir-fry at the mall, and a raspberry/blueberry smoothie with a little protein powder. Then later I had popcorn and probably about 25 small chocolate bars. About 1 a.m. I got up from in front of the TV feeling a sharp pain in my back and some pain in my stomach. Id felt back pains like that before and figured Id pulled a muscle, so I assumed Id managed to eat like a pig and move wrong and was paying the price. I went to bed, figuring itd all work itself out by morning. About 5:30, I woke up with excruciating pain all throughout my abdomen. By 7, I was nauseous, and ended up curled on the floor in a fetal position. This was clearly not just a chocolate-inspired stomachache sprinkled with a pulled muscle. Ame called 911 and I got my first ambulance ride since I was in first grade. After the blood and urine work came back, the official diagnosis was that I had passed a kidney stone. Now I understand why they say that if you havent gone through it yourself, you cant really appreciate a kidney stone. We pretty much waited it out, and the pain was all but gone within a couple more hours. (When I look back on the other times I had the same kind of back pain in the same area, though less severe, I wonder if I had passed smaller stones then, and not pulled a muscle as I thought.) Interestingly, the monitor read my blood pressure as about 116/70 at its lowest, so I now have an official BP measurement that is very healthy, and my heart rate was so low -- it was regularly dropping into the mid 40s -- that the alarm kept going off. This is a very good thing. I had always clocked my own resting heart rate at about 52-55 beats/minute, which indicates a very good cardio-vascular system; the mid 40s is considered athletic. So that was encouraging. After being released around noon, we drove to the pharmacy to fill a prescription. I happened to look down at my arm, where the paramedics had put in a line for fluids, and noticed the business end of the needle still stuck there. We went back to the hospital, to the ER admitting desk, and I asked if I was supposed to remove it myself. They were startled, to say the least, and apologized all over the place for letting me out with that thing still stuck in there. Anyway, thanks to all our friends who received an early morning phone call asking for prayer for me. Im doing great!
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 21:42:01 +0000
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