I’m up before eight on Monday morning.  I have an important appointment at ten.  I have a glass of ice water and check my email before showering.  As  I commence my morning constitutional, the devil himself wades in and stabs my junk over and over with a red hot trident.

This is clearly beyond fucked up.

I never make it to the shower.

I gather myself and cancel my appointment.

I wonder if it’s a kidney stone.

I call my doctor and they tell me I can be seen at two thirty.

As the day wears on, each episode of relieving myself is more excruciating than the last until just around two, when I lose consciousness and wake up on the linoleum a minute or so later.

I would end up lying about this, only to confess it a few days later.

I’m late getting to the doctor.

BP 118 over 76 and pulse normal.

Loins aching.

I’d just been in a few months before for a full work up that showed nothing but normal.  Cholesterol is cool.   Liver and kidney function well within parameters.

He’s pretty sure it’s a stone(s) and asks for a urine sample.  I tell him no way can I give him one now because I’m afraid I’ll end upon the floor again.  Plus I’m not wanting to be heard screaming like a little girl.  He’s a cautious and reluctant physician.  He thinks maybe I should go to the emergency room.  I leave with a jar for my sample to be performed at home in the morning and a prescription for some weak ass painkiller that I’m sure won’t mitigate my agony at all.

I get it filled anyway.

I get home and the wife and kids are here.  I pop three of the pills and begin to marinate in my inevitable juices.  I know I’ll have to pee again sooner or later.

Sooner or later.

Around eight I decide to go for it although I know it’s gonna suck.  It does.  There really is no way to describe it.  It really is like being stabbed in the unit by Satan with a smoldering dagger.  There is the deepest ache along with the most searing sting and the sickest, most nauseating bloom of pain that reminds me of any and all violence ever committed against my balls as well as any time I’ve ever caught my pecker in my zipper times some crazy exponential.  I manage to maintain consciousness but I’m a shaky sweaty mess when I emerge from the bathroom as my wife takes it all in.

My father is somewhat famous for a number of colorful expressions, I keep remembering one in particular.  While gulping habanero peppers like grapes he would grin and say, “Makes childbirth an absolute pleasure………”

I’d read that the level of pain when passing a stone is equivalent to what women experience during childbirth.

An ER nurse would later confirm this.

Fast forward to about one thirty a.m. and I’m starting to sweat again.  My angel of mercy is up with me because she knows and she’s trying to talk me into the emergency room before I have to go again.  I’m on the verge of panic.  Her logic prevails when she describes a scenario where they will shoot me full of something enough to make me not give a shit and I will be able to pee and they will then diagnose and treat me and everything will be better.

This finally makes sense to me and we leave in the middle of the night and it’s raining.  She drops me off at the entrance and goes to park the car.  They give me paperwork and she arrives disgusted that I’m sitting there filling it out.  So with an articulate brevity and fierceness she describes my situation to the woman behind the desk.  I’m admitted abruptly by a male nurse and my BP is whacky.  Like 102 over 98.  My pulse is racing.

My loins are aching.

Very soon they’ve taken blood and I’m on an IV of saline and ten milligrams of morphine.  Within a few minutes I’m being wheeled to the Arthur C. Clark CT Scan room.  Morphine is nothing short of awesome in an ER at 2 a.m.  That is until you gotta pee again and then you are just as sober a five year old on the first day of school.

Unimaginable pain.  Without the morphine I would have folded for sure.

They now have everything they need.  Blood, CT SCan and urine through a filter like the paper oil cone they give you at the gas station.

Nothing in the sieve.

I’m reclining in the bed having accomplished everything I came here to do.  The morphine settles its hands around my head and face again.

I like the doctor.  He is young, which is weird because it makes me realize I’m just not.  He tells me with absolute confidence the the event horizon has expired.  I’ve passed the stone or stones and I’ve been torn up pretty good.  He tells me  I’m going to experience the same kind of pain when I pee for the next 24 to 48 hours.  Fuck me.  That’s not the bad news.  The bad news is I’ve still got a sizable one sitting in my left kidney.  I’m likely to go through the same thing again and it will probably be worse.

He gives me a big ass Norco and writes me a scripts for more of that as well as Motrin and something called Phenazopyridine.  It’s about 4:30 am and I can’t fill them until 8 am and I worry I’ll need them before then.

We come home and despite the crazy amount of narcotics in my system, there’s no way I can sleep.  I’m still afraid to pee again and my angel of mercy must take our oldest to school.  Our youngest has a cold and she stays home with me.  I doze and wake up in time to get to the pharmacy as it opens. I contemplate the DUI but decide I just can’t care.

I come home and dope myself up.

I start drinking water.

Within a few hours I pee again and it’s pretty goddamn bad.  But not so bad it scares me.  It gets better through the day.

By the end of the day I’m fascinated by the neon light saber coming out of my johnson.  The doctor told me the Phenazopyridine would make my pee crazy orange.  My wife and I marvel at the beautiful color against the background of our white porcelain commode.  I had to call her in and show her.

So I’ve still got one waiting in the wings. My left kidney. Between 6 and 7 millimeters translates to an asteroid potentially big enough to destroy the earth and wipe out civilization as I know it.

I imagine that it will just be about the time I stop thinking about all this every time I pee when that asteroid launches from my left kidney and makes it’s way on a collision course for my planet.

Drinks for my friends.

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