My day in the hospital and more fun stuff

Well, to say I'm a bit behind in blogging is an understatment! I lost access to my external hard drive. The connection was broken (I think Miss P knocked it off my bed while I was uploading pics to Costco). Anyhow, I am back in business thanks to my wonderful husband who took apart the hard drive and held the connection long enough to retrieve all of our photos, literally held by his own two fingers while being slightly electrocuted. He later put on a rubber glove that lessened the pain and then he found a c-clamp that Santa gave him last Christmas. So, I'm back in business.

Tyler took all of this week off while the kids are out of school for Spring Break. We had high hopes and dreams of taking them all to Disneyland, but it just wasn't in the stars, or in the budget. So we planned on just doing something fun and inexpensive each day. I had been having some pretty bad low back paing for the last few weeks and then I thought I had a bladder infection, no pain, it just felt like I had to pee ALL the time. I put a call into my Dr a week ago yesterday, Friday. I never heard back. Monday morning I took my sister and her baby to his Dr's appt at 9am. Right after that we were going to kick off our week with something fun. Well, by 9:30 my back pain had gotten so bad I was crying and it quickly escalated to the point where I knew we had to leave Dustin's (my nephew) appt and get me into urgent care. My Dr. said they had nothing until 1pm. I asked my sister if she could drive, that's how bad it hurt, my sister has no license. She declined and I somehow managed to drive us to urgent care. By this point I feel like I am literally dying, a slow painful death. The lady at the window hands me some forms and tells me to fill them out and bring them back to the window with my insurance card. HA HA HA, I don't know exactly what I said, but I handed them to my sister and told her to fill them out, she did what she could and I set them back on the desk. By the hords of people I could tell it was going to be a VERY long wait. I was pretty sure I would be dead by then. Morgan called Tyler to come pick us up, drop her and the kids back at home and get me to the ER. NOTE: if you are in severe pain or need to be seen immediately, don't bother with urgent care.
Ok, so we go wait in the van, I climb into the backseat amid several mismatched shoes, dirty socks, trash, wrappers, a sandwich bag (this is fortunate, I'll be needing that in just a few minutes). I make a mental note that if I live through this we will be cleaning out the van. The pain has actually gotten worse by now and I feel the need to vomit, remember the sandwich bag I saw and use it. You see, although the bag is small, the day before had been fast Sunday, and I wasn't feeling well, so I had hardly any dinner and I hadn't eaten yet this day, so it was plenty big enough to hold the contents of my stomach. After what seems like hours Tyler arrives and we're headed for home. Peyton held my hand all the way home and it really did help, I no longer wanted to just die.
We arrive home and I deposit my baggie in the laundry room sink on my way to my room before escaping inside myself to become one with the pain. Somewhere along the line it was decided that we would call an ambulance and I waited again for what felt like hours. 4 men arrived and questions were asked and answered and I was put onto a gurney and wheeled out right before my kids shocked faces. Peyton was crying a little but I later discovered that the boys were merely entertained. The 2 men that rode in the back with me were very nice and tried to calm me down. They said it sounded like it could be a kidney stone or my appendix. My sister mentioned it could be a kidney stone earlier, so that's what I was leaning towards. I got to the hospital and went straight into emergency (benefit of taking an ambulance). They pretty quickly got me hooked up to an IV after some minor difficulties, asked more questions and then decided it was probably a kidney stone. They gave me morphine to help a little immediately, and then an anti inflammatory to help more but not for another 20-30 minutes, and they gave me something for the nausea. 20 minutes later I was feeling good and feeling a bit embarassed about my dramatics. I must say though, that was way worse than labor pains because it was constant, absolutely no relief. They made me give a urine sample (which I had to go into the ER restroom for BAREFOOT, twice, because they lost the first one) found blood in my urine and determined that I was not pregnant so they could do the CT scan. They did the CT scan and found a stone 4mm around. Any bigger and they woulkd have had to operate. I was a little scared to be sent home, scared that the pain meds would wear off and I would be in severe pain again. They sent me home with Zofran for nausea and Norco for pain and a "hat" to pee in and strainers for my urine. I passed my stone late that night and I definately did not need to starin my urine to see that there was a stone in it! I was going to post more about the rest of our week, but that was pretty long so the rest can wait.

Have any of you passed a kidney stone before?