Pew! Pew! Pew!

I'm getting lasered next week.

I'll start at the beginning. Last week I knew I had a kidney stone. I loaded up on Vicodin and went about my business. I've passed enough of them to know the drill. Take some drugs, drink lots of water, etc.

I woke up Saturday night about midnight in some serious pain. I took a Vicodin and paced my apartment for about 20 minutes waiting for it to kick in. 20 minutes passed, and I'm still in pain. 30 minutes and no relief. 40 minutes and I'm about to vomit. Time to get to the emergency room. I made a couple half-hearted attempts to call somebody to come take me, but it's easier and quicker to just drive myself. Stupid, I know. I've already been read the riot act by a few people.

Get to ER and thank goodness there was nobody else there waiting, I got right in. My nurse, Lola was wonderful. She took my vitals, gave me the dreaded gown and had me give a pee sample. I apologized to her for constantly pacing and moving, but she wasn't phased.
I could have kissed her when she came at me with the syringe of pain killers. I think it was Dilauded. An hour and 2 more shots later I was able to lay down.
I was still in pain, but it was tolerable.

At one point Nurse Lola made me call somebody to come up to the hospital "because you aren't driving!" I called Mom. I think at one point I asked Nurse Lola how she felt about the Copa Cabana song and Lola the showgirl.

The Doctor was nice, he commented on my hot pink toe nail polish and ordered a cat scan.

This is where it gets interesting. The cat scan reveals that I do in fact have a kidney stone. It's about 8mm. EIGHT!! Almost a centimeter. Like a raisin. I'm not going to pass this one and I'm being admitted to the hospital. Sweet.

I was pretty loaded, but I remember somebody telling me that once they get bigger than 3 or 4mm, they are near impossible to pass. Mine hasn't even left the kidney, it's trying to though, that's why I'm in pain.

The staff must have been a little bored because once they got me to my room, I had 2 nurses and 2 CNAs getting me settled. The CNA who weighed me commented on my hot pink toe nail polish.

9am Sunday morning, I'm laying there watching the gold medal basketball game and my day shift nurse, Kathy comes in. She's very cheery and tells me I am scheduled for surgery at 10am. WTF?!?! I don't think so.

Ok so it's not really surgery, it's a "procedure". Yeah, a procedure that requires general anesthesia. *click* to see what they did. Oh, and the OR nurse said she liked my hot pink toe nail polish.

Next Wednesday they are going to go in (up?) my ureter and blast the stone with lasers to break it up. Laser Lithotripsy I'm less concerned about this than I am about having the stent removed. The nurse told me that they just do it in the office a couploe weeks later, with no pain killers. Umm, ok. "It only takes a couple minutes!" Uh huh.

The first couple days after the stent was put in, I was pretty miserable, but Percocet helps :). We'll see how I do when they take the stent out.