After the kidney stone nightmare last night (and this morning), I decided to work from home today just in case there was still a fragment left to come. Or my nausea returned. Or whatever.

After lunch I noticed that my right leg hurt pretty bad. I take a look and... yep... I've got a massive bruise on the front of my upper leg and the side of my lower leg. Absolutely no clue how I did it. I was in such a huge amount of pain that I could have gotten hit by a car and barely noticed. Maybe I did get hit by a car!

The good news is that I get to share this awesome drawing of the male urinary system that I drew up in one of my past posts about kidney stones...

I was pretty tender on my right side all day today, but actual pain was minimal. I managed to keep an Eggo waffle down for lunch (no butter, no syrup), get a huge chunk of work done, and drive over the mountains for my appointment tomorrow, so I'm calling the day a win.

As for the drive itself, it was pretty crazy. Roads were clear. But there was a lot of snow assaulting me going up the pass and hardly any visibility coming down the pass. I was excited to post a few photos of it all, but my dashcam cord has gone bad and my camera wasn't on for the whole trip. Maybe if you just picture A WHITEOUT... JUST WHITE EVERYWHERE... and that will be close enough.

And now, for your reading enjoyment, I present... A TIMELIME OF HORRIFIC SUFFERING...

• 5:40pm I leave work to get cleaned up so I can see a friend's photos from a trip he took.
• 6:15pm I have a faux-cheese sandwich for dinner.
• 7:30pm I arrive at my friend's house. Everybody else had dinner earlier (which I was invited to, but skipped, because I don't like to make life difficult for people over my dietary choices) but I did snack a little on crackers, carrots, and hummus that was left over.
• 8:15pm I bow out early because I feel some kind of abdominal distress coming on. From what, exactly, I have no idea.
• 8:30pm I get home, take an antacid, and output some PDFs for work to email out for review.
• 9:10pm Starting to get really uncomfortable now. I decide to call it an early night.
• 9:20pm And now I get it. I've felt this before. Kidney stones. I haven't had one since 2017.
• 9:30pm There goes the contents of my stomach.
• 9:40pm And now I'm in serious pain. I take one of my three remaining Oxycodone/Anti-Nausea combos I have left from 2017. Immediately throw it up.
• 9:50pm The pain is almost overwhelming, so I try one of my two remaining Oxycodone/Anti-Nausea combos. It goes no better. Even the small sip of water was too much and everything comes right back up.
• 10:00pm I have now reached the "Begging for Death Stage." I am very close to calling a friend to take me to the hospital for a pain-killer IV, but all I can think about is how it will cost me thousands of dollars since I'm nowhere close to my massive insurance deductible.
• 10:30pm At this point, I'm crossing my fingers that I'll just pass out from the agony.
• 11:20pm Time has no meaning. Has it been hours? Days? Weeks? I don't know. My cats have abandoned me because I'm pretty much screaming non-stop. It doesn't no good, but I can't help myself. I keep running to the bathroom to throw up, but there's nothing to throw up.
• 12:07am I know it was 12:07am because that's what it said on my clock when I decided to take my final Oxycodone/Anti-Nausea combo. Now I have something to throw up.
• 1:20am According to my Apple Watch, I passed out for 35 minutes or so. I have no recollection of it. According to what I remember, I was awake and screaming the whole time. This actually makes me happy, because it meant my cats had a break from being absolutely terrorized.
• 2:30am Around this time, I am crawling around my house looking through every pill bottle I can find to see if there's another hit of Oxy I can throw up. There is not. I contemplate the hospital again, feeling like the pain will never end.
• 3:30am Around this time, the pain starts to recede.
• 3:40am The pain isn't gone, but it might as well be. I have two soda crackers and a sip of water to celebrate. Nothing gets thrown up, so I guess the worst is over. I drink a full glass of water and try and get some sleep.
• 7:20am I wake up and take a whiz. That wonderful feeling of having a needle stabbing inside my urethra is both painful and a relief, because I know it's now officially over. UNLESS THERE IS A SECOND ONE SOMEWHERE ALL UP IN MY BUSINESS!
• A full day of work followed by a drive over the mountains, trivia night at a bar where I was smart enough to eat very little and drink no alcohol (but not smart enough at trivia), and an early bedtime.

Let's not be doing that again any time soon.