Stones (and not in a good way)
You know how most of the time I post an entry after slacking for a few days a week, I talk about how nothing is really interesting? Well, NOT TODAY. And not in a good way either.
I have pregnancy-related kidney stones.
They suck ass. They hurt so bad when passing (even the little ones) that they make me puke.
They’re pretty rare, and no one really knows why they occur. Guesses include: the kidneys are overworked and underpaid, the urine composition is slightly different, and that your body just really hates being pregnant. But men are far more likely to get them than women, and pregnant woment are more likely to get them than other women.
Here are the things that you do for kidney stones if you are a man or a non-pregnant woman:
-Take some dye stuff and get an xray that shows how many you have and how large they are.
-Get some sort of really strong sound waves directed at your kidneys that break up the large stones into managable pieces.
-Drink a lot of water.
-Take really strong painkillers, since these things hurt like a motherfucker and Tylenol/Advil/asprin doesn’t work at all.
-Pass the stones.
Here are the same list adjusted for things that you can do during pregnancy:
-Take some dye stuff and get an xray that shows how many you have and how large they are.*
-Get some sort of really strong sound waves directed at your kidneys that break up the large stones into managable pieces.
-Drink a lot of water.
-Take really strong painkillers, since these things hurt like a motherfucker and Tylenol/Advil/asprin doesn’t work at all.
-Pass the stones.
As you can see, my options are limited.
*Since the medical community frowns on directing xrays at a fetus, they have to do an ultrasound instead. The ultrasound is less likely to be able to pick up the stones (though in my case they did), and is also hard to do because a 12-inch long baby in my abdomen has pushed my kidneys up into my rib cage and behind my intestines. I spent 45 minutes having an ultrasound transducer pushed into my rib cage so hard that I now have bruises. I don’t bruise easily at all, and you can’t even really see them, but they’re definitely there — anything that touches my side makes me yelp.
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On the plus side, as long as I’m not actually in the process of passing a stone, I feel normal. It’s just that they’re in there lying in wait to kick my ass whenever they feel like it.
I also got some great quotes and stories from the experience.
As I was waiting in the Northwestern Hospital Radiology department, one of the women checking people in was talking to a coworker. She said, “It didn’t just Urkel me, I was ANGRY.” I was giggling inside. I hope she meant to say “irk,” but I got a spectacular mental image of what Urkeling someone would involve.
The ultrasound tech was a bit rough, as I mentioned. He would ask me to take a deep breath and hold it, then would tell me to breathe normally. However, he kept forgetting to tell me when I could breathe again, so eventually he just said, “If you think I’ve forgotten to tell you to breathe, please breathe!”
He was a 50-ish year old probably-Pakistani man and said (after beating the hell out of me with the transducer for 45 minutes) that we would next take a quick look at the baby and did I know the sex? I said that they had said she was a girl, but he could feel free to double check. He looked around a little and said, “Well, I think it’s a girl. She’s not in the best position right now, but I definitely don’t see any ding dong bell!”
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After this excitement, I went to my doctor to get my blood drawn and then headed over to the office to get a little work in this afternoon.
It turns out that I have the most adorable coworkers in the history of adorable coworkers, because I came there in a pretty awful mood and was feeling really sorry for myself. But when I walked over to my cube, I discovered this:
It was hard to keep feeling sorry for myself surrounded by that much cuteness. Also, a monkey.
