Kidney stoners unite!

Three weeks ago today the most intense pain I’ve EVER felt punched me in the stomach like a bolt of lightning.
No exageration.
I tried to walk it off, laid down to ease it, even tried to curl up into a little ball to make it to go away. Didn’t work and in no time at all I knew I needed help.
Matt was already gone to work and the kids were starting to rouse so I called my poor mom and awakened her with my panicked, pain-stricken plea for help.
At this point my kids were busy watching TV in the living room and I was moving around uncomfortably trying to Google my way to a diagnosis.
“Dr. Oehlschlager” (and my Google results) came to the conclusion that my appendix was sick. I was pretty sure of it because by the time my mom came over I started puking and it seemed like the pain was intensifying.
After a quick phone call to my Aunt (LPN) Mindy (our family’s go-to gal for anything medical), we hauled off for the longest......ride......ever.......to Springfield. And then waited for what felt like the longest......time......ever......in the emergency room.
Seriously, I thought I was going to die. No, I didn’t think I was going to die, I WANTED to die. The pain was that bad.
The intensity was literally equated to the peak of a contraction that never subsided.
More puking and IV pain meds later, I still was in agonizing pain. Morphine didn’t even help.
The doc’s third try at meds finally did the trick and my pain began to ease.
A few tests later, Dr. Oehlschlager/Google was proved a fraud when the CT showed a kidney stone partially obstructing my right kidney.
No exploding appendix. Just a “tiny,” jagged piece of matter making me want to cut off my toes to distract from the pain (which I think I actually told my nurse).
“It will pass,” the doctor told me with prescriptions for pain medicine and marching orders to follow up with a urologist.
And then the pain just left.
It disappeared as quickly as it came. If I wouldn’t have had the IV hangover and bandages on my arms from said IVs, it would have been like it was all a dream. Or a nightmare.
I waited (impatiently) for the stone to pass and Googled away on why this happened and what I could do to keep it from EVER happening again.
But the day I could hold my stone up in a sanitary Ziplock bag as a trophy to the pain I endured never came.
A secondary infection came, though, and so did more testing and then the threat of surgery because of the pesky stone.
I was preparing myself that I was probably going to have to have surgery the next day (at least a 75 percent chance, according to the professionals) when my urologist came back into the room all smiles with news that the turkey of a stone had already passed.
AND I MISSED IT!
The doctor had more “good” news: There are apparently two more (very small) stones waiting in my kidneys!
Ugh!
But for now, all is well.
After going through that short, yet traumatizing, ordeal I have come to the conclusion that people who have survived kidney stones need to receive a pin or a bracelet or medal or at the very least a t-shirt.
Because kidney stones are no joke!