Greetings at 3:45am on Thursday morning!
I have kidney stones!
I figured it out because I've been screaming in pain for the past 6 hours. Still hurting, but I really, really hope the worst of it is finally over, because... holy crap is this unreal. I used to get them regularly. Like clockwork once a year. But then they mysteriously stopped, and I haven't had one since 2017. Probably because I started drinking lemonade regularly? No idea why they're back.
What's bothering me most... other than the sheer agony, of course... is that I really should have had somebody drive me to the hospital. When the pain is so bad that I can't keep down pain medication, I used to go and have them give me an IV so I can get through it. But now? The whole time I was terrorizing my cats with my yelling, I was thinking "I know it will pass eventually... so can I really afford a hospital visit? No. I will just continue to be in absolute agony to see if can get through this on my own."
What kind of FUCKED UP "health care" system is it where somebody has to be screaming for six hours because a hospital visit is off the table for them? I have no fucking clue what we're even doing. Guess I should be glad it wasn't ten hours. Or days.
We'll find out exactly how bad our "health care" is tomorrow (today?) when I go in for a consultation for yet another eye surgery. Where the entire time I'll be thinking "Do I really need to see that badly?"
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Please tell me you’re able to know when the stones pass. I only inquire because the one and only time I had a stone my doctor scared the crap out of me saying if it didn’t pass within x amount of time it could cause permanent damage to my kidney.
I think when you feel it, that’s the journey from your kidneys to your bladder. I don’t know that you know it’s there when it’s actually forming in your kidneys? I dunno. You know it’s passed to your bladder, because the agony stops. And, if you’re a guy at least, you know when it’s passed out of your bladder because you feel it on the way out.
It’s been years but I’m pretty sure mine was somewhere between the kidney and my bladder so that was the concern. Luckily I was able to drink lots of water after getting pain and anti nausea pills and it came out the next day.
My life would be so much easier if, when I get a kidney stone, I could keep down the anti-nausea medication so I could keep down the painkillers. But that’s not to be, so I have to go to the hospital and get the IV. Which is now entirely too expensive to do. Why can’t I get IV drugs for at home? Well, okay, I know why, but… dang.
Our insurance system is bullshit. Talk about something that needs to be stripped down to nothing and started all over again. Oh, and medical billing.