Solid as a Stone

You’d think that somebody who’s already endured the absolute pain and agony of a kidney stone would do anything they could to avoid re-visiting the torture … you’d think… I, myself, had a rather stubborn kidney stone a few years back that actually required extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (basically breaking up the stone via shock waves) and you can most definitely believe me when I tell you that I do not want to go through that again. Not so much the lithotripsy (that wasn’t too bad – some bruising and bloody piss for a while) but the stone itself – not fun at all.

I remember rather well how it all started. There was a period where I was getting rather unusual (well, to me at least) pains in my lower abdomen area. It wasn’t really anything too disconcerting; seemed to me like I just had some sort of gas-related issue – nothing that a nice fart wouldn’t take care of. But the discomfort seemed to be rather persistent. It would come in waves – usually at night – and my poorly hatched cure of “cutting the cheese” had less and less effect over time. This continued for a couple months. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and even had Matt (a guy I worked with at the time) pick up some ex-lax for me one morning when I started thinking that it might be constipation. Of course it wasn’t; but after several sleepless nights of tossing and turning in pain, I needed to try something.

Then one day, and I remember this day very vividly, I headed down to Pink E’s for another DPT (Denver Poker Tour) tournament. The tournaments at Pink E’s were losing their popularity a bit and what was once a guaranteed three-table tournament with a substantial wait-list had become more of a hit-and-miss event. It was actually a good thing as it’s much easier to win a certificate in the smaller tournaments – a decrease in the number of fish willing to call your strategically sound bet and draw that miracle suck-out on the river is a good thing. The poker tables weren’t even delivered this evening and we were forced to play on a couple rickety folding tables with some sort of cheap felt-like cloth draped over them. Suffice it to say that the DPT no longer even hosts tournaments at Pink E’s – it’s become one of the many places that I “used” to play at regularly … but I’m getting off the point here a bit…

When I arrived that evening, I was dealing with yet another bout of discomfort. It didn’t seem like anything unusual as I had been experiencing this same thing, time and time again, for the last couple months. I figured it would go away with time – it always had before. I took my seat at Todd’s table and played a bit of poker – poorly… The pain continued to get worse. I was having a very hard time staying focused and rather quickly decided that I needed to get the hell out of there. No problem – getting knocked out of a poker tournament is not a difficult task – a couple suicidal plays later and I was in my car, in what was becoming excruciating pain, heading back to my house.

But where I ended up was not my house. My plans changed as I was driving home writhing in pain. I decided to make a B line straight to the Longmont United Hospital where, after freaking a few people out in the waiting room with a variety of pain induced grimaces, I was finally admitted (to the emergency room – not actually hospitalized) and tended to. They gave me some powerful pain killers, informed me that I most likely had a kidney stone and helped me setup an appointment with a urologist. They also took some kind of fancy X-rays that I would pick up and take to the urologist.

Luckily, I was still employed at Flextronics when all this went down. That meant that I was one of the privileged ones in this country that had medical insurance. Lord knows what that little trip would have cost me if all this happened a bit later when Flextronics Semiconductor was sold and I became responsible for picking up any health insurance I needed – which, for the last couple of years, has been none. And that wasn’t the only hospital bill related to my little calcium deposit nightmare. After visiting with the urologist and finding out that the problem was, in fact, a kidney stone – a rather stubborn stone that seemed to be content lodged near the top of my ureter – it was decided that lithotripsy would be needed in order to expedite the stone’s passage. That procedure was performed at the McKee Medical Center in Loveland shortly thereafter. I really don’t know what I would have done if I had been uninsured…

It was a rough couple of months – something that I most definitely do not want to go through again. Unfortunately I’ve got a bad habit of forgetting important rules that an experience such as this creates for me. One rule that I was supposed to be following was to pay closer attention to what I was putting in my body since the recurrence rate for people who get kidney stones is 70-80% and pretty much the only control you have over this is your diet. The recommendation is to drink a hell of a lot more water and cut back on foods with high oxalate levels (and this list of foods includes quite a few that I am rather fond of…). I was also informed that coffee is very bad when it comes to kidney stones and orange juice is also pretty bad. The apparent healthy diet for a kidney stone sufferer is very bland foods and lots and lots of water.

Now I’ve never been much of a water drinker – I’ve always thought that drinks should at least have taste. That being said, I’m rather sure that my water intake has been far less than sufficient. Although lately I have been drinking quite a few liquids – mainly coffee (I probably have five or six cups a day at work) and fruit juices (all of which contain large percentages of orange juice). This can’t be good. I do have a beer or two on a regular basis as well and – wouldn’t you know it? – beer is also listed as bad when it comes to stones. Now the problem with all this is that I’m beginning to think that I might have another stone…

I’ve been experiencing somewhat mild discomfort in my lower abdomen lately that seems to be pretty much identical to the discomforts I experienced at the beginning of this story. It’s been a few years since my last (and first) stone however my current discomfort is bringing back those memories rather vividly. Something tells me that taking this job with its included health insurance might have been a good thing. I better start researching the locations for some hospitals around here… This could become rather interesting … wish me luck.

bis später,

Coriolis