Oh, My Aching Back

I didn’t do any ironing.  DeeDude keeps making references to what a messy place my study is.  Three weeks worth of shirts are hanging over the chair behind me.  Then, there’s stuff I got shopping yesterday on top.  He says, “If my area looked like this I wouldn’t be hearing the end of it.”  Meaning I’m a nag on my better days.  But, my back has been hurting me for days.  Last week I started out thinking I was having a kidney stone.  The pain was moving around on my back.  Also, I noticed, or I think I noticed that I wasn’t peeing as much.  Stone.  Couldn’t be anything else.  So, I began drinking water like crazy.  

I had a stone some time ago and it was pure agony.  I don’t want to go through that again.  If I even get a hint that something like that is going on I will begin drinking large amounts of water.  Actually, I should be drinking 12 glasses of water every day anyway and not wait for the threat of a stone to rise up.  

I know when to go to the doctor and it wasn’t time yet.  Also, I was feeling better by the end of the week when the nurse finally got in touch with me.  I wasn’t in the best of moods when she tried to tell me that my record said I’d not had a stone before.  Officially, I’m lying?  

I said to the lady, “I was in the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt.  The pain in my back moved from the back to the front.  I couldn’t stand up straight and I had to keep pacing while I was waiting to see a doctor.  Then, later once I got home, while I drank water like nobody’s business I couldn’t pee.  The pain was horrible when the stone passed and afterward I peed like Niagra Falls.  And, that’s when there was absolutely no pain.”  She said, “It sounds like you had a stone.”  But, her voice was doubtful.  She told me the urine test they’d performed indicated there was no stone and my record didn’t indicate whether I had an ultra-sound or something else she said that I can’t remember now.  I said, “I was in too much pain and I don’t remember what sort of procedure it was.”  What I didn’t say was, “Why wasn’t whatever procedure I had noted in my record?”

She said I could come in for a 24 hour pee test.  I don’t even want to know what that is.  I told her no thanks and I feel better now.  Good thing I’ve still got the Tylenol with codeine that they gave me the last time I had a stone.  I know what to do and it doesn’t include going to see the doctor if all they are going to do is tell me to drink water. At least not this time.

Anyway, these are the things I’ve learned researching places on the internet about kidney stones.

1. There are 4 different kinds of stones.  Best way to determine which kind you have is to pee through a sieve or cheesecloth.  Great. The doctor needs to know what kind of stone you’ve got in order to proscribe a good treatment….like change in your diet or drugs.


2. One kind of a stone is calcium, but the 1,000 mg of calcium I take at night shouldn’t contribute to a stone forming.  You’ve got to be taking something like 2,500 mg a day of calcium before you should be concerned.


3. Once you have a stone the likelihood of you having another is greater.


4. Being diabetic I might be prone to kidney stones.


5. Drinking half a cup of lemon juice a day will help lots.  Mix it with water and sugar-free sweetener to make lemonade.


6. Drink 12 glasses of water (lemonade counts too).  Soda containing caffeine, coffee and tea do not count toward the water requirement.  They act as diuretics.


7. If you can’t flush the damned thing(s) with water you will need to visit the doctor.  They have different procedures and I have not really investigated them much.  I did hear tell of some sort of sonic blasting to break down the stone so you can pass it in smaller pieces.


8. But, best not to let the suckers form in the first place.  I’m going to go the lemon juice route.  I bought a big old bottle yesterday.