Brett is the best

Or, how I spent my Sunday morning on morphine. (There will be talk of bodily functions, just a forewarning.)

At 6:00am this morning my body woke me up with what felt like the absolute worst back spasm I have ever had. I tried to put pressure on what I thought was the offending muscle, and that either didn’t help or it made it worse. I was so far on the pain scale by then that I couldn’t tell. I tried heat, and that didn’t work. I got up to get some water and pain medicine and got nauseous when I got up and had to pause and throw up while I was in the bathroom. :sick: I got my phone and hobbled, moaning, back in to bed and called Brett.42D

I woke him up, but oh I was glad that his phone was on. Through the pain I told him I was in pain. He asked what he could do and I asked him if he could come be with me. He said he’d be right there. I told him to bring his key because I didn’t want to have to get up to let him in. And then I found some pants and a shirt near me and figured out how to get them on while moaning in pain. About 6:40 the pain started to subside a bit and I was able to rest a bit. I also grabbed my netbook which was nearby and checked out WebMD and the Merck Manual to see what they said about what I was feeling.

Brett arrived at 7:00 and the pain was starting to go back up again. He came in, looked at me, and suggested maybe I should go to the hospital. I told him I’d thought that but I thought I still had my old insurance card in my wallet and wasn’t sure exactly where the new one was. I also told him I’d probably get nauseous with the movement. He grabbed my cleaning bucket from under the sink and I found my wallet. Holding on dearly to his arm we got to his car.

I did get nauseous on the way, but we had the bucket. He mentioned I looked like I was in labor as I tried to breathe through the pain. We got to the hospital and found the emergency room by about 7:30. Bent over and leaning on the counter to hold me up, I filled out the intake form while Brett washed out the bucket. They told us to wait. When they took me back to triage me they got me a wheel chair. One of the nurses asked me if I’d ever had kidney stones. I told her no, but that was what the internet said I might have.

While we waited to be taken to a room I threw up again, but the pain started to go down quite a bit. I wasn’t better, but I was able to be a bit more comfortable. I told Brett I was glad he’d already decided to marry me because I must look great then. He said I looked a bit like I was dying. ;-(

They took me back to a room by about 8:00. The doctor came in and said it seemed like it could be gall stones, kidney stones, or my appendix could’ve twisted a bit and I could have appendicitis. They said they wanted blood and urine samples to run tests on. I hobbled down to the bathroom and when I looked at what I got in the cup, I saw a speck of something and thought, “that’s not supposed to be there.” 😮

I hobbled back to my bed and they hooked me up to a heart rate monitor finger thingy, a blood pressure cuff, and got an IV going. Brett held my hand when they stuck my arm. And they gave me some morphine for the pain. The nurse told me it could give me a head rush or a headache. It actually gave me a leg rush, and that was weird. But the pain was getting much better. It felt more like I was sore after working out rather than like I was going to die. And comparably, that was much better. I was at a 4 instead of a 9.5.

Brett worked on his Elder’s Quorum lesson and we talked about it while we waited. The blood work showed no infection, but the urine tests showed a lot of blood there, so they figured it was kidney stones. They did a CT scan to find out.

And yup. I have kidney stones. Quite a few of them. In both kidneys. They said they couldn’t see the one that was causing me pain that morning (that’s because they were looking on the CT scan and needed to be looking in the cup), but I’d probably be passing the other ones eventually. None of them were big enough they’d need to break them up though. They gave me a prescription for pain medicine and sent me home. We left the hospital about 12:30 or so. The whole trip took about 5 hours, and that’s really not that bad.

How I spent my afternoon on percocet is a lot less interesting. It involves me sleeping on the couch and not a whole lot else. We’ll see what my kidneys decide to do next.

And one day when Brett is driving me to the hospital because I actually am in labor, we’ll have to see how the two compare.