Diet be damned!  Lifestyle be damned!  Environment be damned!

Kidney stones are genetic so suck it up and learn to live with it.  My father had stones, my mother too, albeit hers were of the gall bladder variety, and I just listened to my sister recount her latest adventures in pain and her growing fondness for Demerol.

It is the most exquisite pain I have known.  It starts mid-back and then, depending on which kidney is sending its cargo to the bladder, works its way around the left or right side to settle with a sickening persistence in the groin.  The catheter that leads from kidney to bladder narrows so that the stone, which may if you’re unlucky, be a razor-edged crystal that slices its way to the ultimate destination.  For once it has reached the bladder, it still has a way to go.  It may also produce an alarming amount of blood.

Males take note: if you’re not squirming yet then you have never received a substantial blow to the nether regions.  The pain is similar but longer-lasting.  Long ago I learned to tell the emergency nurses to forget the subcutaneous Demerol prick and go straight for the morphine.  You see I’ve done the kidney stone dance on more than 20 occasions, on average about every two years.  I know of that which I speak.

It is a humbling experience.  I once fell from a ladder breaking 2 vertebrae and dislocating a finger.  The attending emerg nurse asks the usual question before administering pain medication, “How would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst that you’ve ever felt?”  I was tempted to laugh.  Not even close.

So there you have it, renal agony, the stoney road to hell.

Lesson #71 – Dances With Stones

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