How many days can one kidney stone ruin?

Well, for me it has been 14 days and counting.  All for one kidney stone.

I was glad that I had cleaned the house on Saturday.  I actually didn't feel great throughout the night but I assumed it was something that I had eaten.  I went to Church and subbed in Primary and felt okay.  However throughout the afternoon, I was beginning to feel sick.

I headed downstairs to take a nap while Jena and Ben watched shows upstairs and Gary was at Church.  Then I had my first experience with a kidney stone pain (much worse than natural childbirth in my experience).  It only lasted about 30 minutes but it was not good.  I spent the rest of the evening laying around and wondering what was going on.  Mostly I was just glad to not feel that pain.

As we headed for bed that night, Gary mentioned that he thought he would take Monday off to get some errands done which had been piling up.  Sounded like a good plan so he sent off an email to his boss and we both headed off to sleep with our Monday to-do lists ready to go.

Didn't have the best night of sleep but got Jena off to school and headed back to bed hoping to get some good rest.  That lasted until about 8:30 when the pain hit again.  Gary took one look at me and said he was taking me to the doctor.  I agreed but the first appointment was not until 2:30.  Gary said no thanks and we headed to the ER.

It was there that they discovered the kidney stone (the ER nurses/staff knew right away by the way I was walking and where the pain was).  I never even though about it being a kidney stone but it made sense when they said it.  They gave me medication and told me to see a specialist within 24 hours.  All of that took Gary's Monday day off and he decided to take Tuesday off to take me to the specialist and then do his errands.

It end up that he took 4 1/2 days off work as he ran me here and there and tried to take care of me and everyone else.

Tuesday:  Specialist who said that we can sit and wait or try to break it up.  Voted for breaking it up.
Wednesday:  Although it is only a procedure, it is done under general anesthetic so it was done at the hospital.  They thought that the stone had responded and broken up. 
Thursday:  Severe unlivable pain again so back to the specialist.  Shot for pain and nausea but they also redid the CAT scan.  The stone was a bit smaller but the tube had swollen around it and it wasn't moving anywhere.  Continue pressure on the kidney on that side.
Friday:  Surgery to remove the stone again at the hospital for the day.  Things went fine.  They left behind some tubing to allow the tube to heal and not close on itself.  Apparently my tube was extremely smaller than normal so they were even more concerned about the tube.

I expected to feel so much better after the surgery but it has been a slow process.  It is likely due to my body's reaction to the tubing which affects some people.  I feel like I have a constant UTI.  It is very hard to sit in a chair for any length of time (which makes things like school, blogging, and UDSF very difficult.)  Everything just feel off and very uncomfortable with periods of bad pain. Ice and heating pads are my new best friends and I have watched a lot of TV.  It seems ridiculous that I am still feeling sick after two weeks and the kidney stone is gone. 

I went to my family practice doctor on Friday because I had to get a refill on another medication so I talked to him about my issues.  He changed the pain medication and double checked to make sure there was no infection.  My urine was clean from infection but still contains a lot of blood so healing is still going on.  Hopefully on Tuesday when they remove the tubing at the office, I will really start to get better.  We should also find out what kind of stone it was and what I can do to make sure that it doesn't ever happen again.

All I can say is that I did not have two weeks to do nothing--Life, it just keeps happening.

The nurse in the ER told me that I can now cross "Have a kidney stone" off my bucket list.  I didn't have it on my list but if crossing it off means that I never have to do this again, I will be adding it immediately.  And my wish is for none of you to ever have one either!