What It's Like to Have a Kidney Stone: My Week of Pain

Last time, I regaled the audience with my tale of going to the emergency room. Although it felt like an alien was in my body waiting to get out to kill me, it turned out it was only a kidney stone. I say only a kidney stone, because a kidney stone just doesn't sound that impressive. When I heard kidney stone, I knew I'd be fine. I did not know how painful the process was going to be until I was fine. You know how people use the expression, "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." Having a kidney stone is the perfect thing to wish upon your worst enemy. Long-term, they'll be fine, but having a kidney stone is brutal, and it may be the most ideal thing to wish upon your worst enemy as you'll see below.

Thursday
When I left the emergency room, it was after midnight, but I needed to pick up Hydrocodone for the pain and FloMax for help urinating. I took my pain medicine and immediately went to sleep when I got home.

Honestly, the next morning I didn't feel too bad. It kind of felt like the pain medicine was going to make me fairly functional with everything, and since it was just a kidney stone, I figured I could power through. I went to work and planned on going about my day as usual.

That plan worked for approximately two hours before I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I'm not sure why I felt so good that first morning, but that good feeling went away, and I was left with horrific pain that made it impossible to focus. I called it a day early and headed home before lunch. I was excited to eat leftover lasagna for lunch, but my stomach wasn't feeling all that well, so I settled for a cheese burrito (cheese, tortilla, hot sauce, it's perfect for kids and adults who just need calories) since I needed to eat something before I took my pee medicine.

After that, it was an exciting day of lying in bed and drinking as much water as possible. I know that doesn't sound exciting, but I started binging wrestling at a ridiculous pace. I watched old Nitros, old Raws, old NXTs, and even old Lucha Undergrounds. It was interesting enough to try to keep my mind on it while also not being so interesting that I'd really be worried if I dozed off for a while. And I did manage to doze off, but only for 10-15 minute stretches.

That is because my body was not digging this kidney stone. The pain from the stone, even with pain killers made my body seize up constantly, so I was basically flexing every muscle in my core for 48 straight hours. On top of this, when I get sick, the first thing that my body loses control of is its ability to control my temperature, so I went from sweating profusely to shaking uncontrollably all day long. Every trip to the bathroom was an adventure as any time I got out of bed, it hurt like hell so my entire body seized up, and since I had just gotten off a hard workout the night before, the muscles got sore pretty quick, so I was constantly flexing sore muscles and it felt like my body was in zero degree temperatures as I could not stop shaking. Thank God for FloMax though, because I could barely feel anything downstairs, but my stream was STRONG. I'm not sure if it works on the other substance coming out of urethras, but if so, adult film stars should definitely be using this stuff for great climax scenes.

I think I might be getting slightly off track.

Anyway, the pain was also so intense that it made me vomit yet again. It is amazing how disgusting vomiting is but how good you feel afterwards. I felt like I had a glow to me. I know it was probably just yesterday's meal and spit dripping from my face, but it sure felt nice.

As you can probably tell, the pain medicine was not nearly as impressive as the FloMax. With the Hydrocodone, you're supposed to take some every 4-6 hours. I was counting down the minutes to that four hour mark, because my body was craving more. I was looking at my clock constantly, convinced that an hour, or at least 45 minutes had passed. It was always the same story, only 15 minutes had gone by. Occasionally, I had to use some rounding and take it more in the 3-3.5 hour range, but even with the relief, I was still left in significant pain. Apparently hospitals have better pain medicine than they give the patients to take home with them. A smarter person may have consulted a medical professional about getting something better, and/or upping the dosage, but since I am a proud (stupid) man, I decided that I would be fine without the help of professionals.

The only other exciting thing is I found the best sleeping position for me, on my right side, slightly curled, multiple pillows and single arm under my head. It didn't work all the time, but it was better than any other position the majority of the time. This took a lot of trial and error, and that means it may have been the most exciting part of my day.

Friday
Remember how I felt pretty good on Thursday morning? That was not the case on Friday as the only time I got out of bed that entire morning was for water and to go to the bathroom. I was still violently shaking any time I got out from under the covers. (it looked like Scott Hall was zapping me with a cattle prod). And when I was under the covers, I was sweating enough to fill my pool.

Although I didn't have the good morning feel on Friday, overall, the pain was less than it had been the day before. Still, there was basically nothing I could do to get totally comfortable, and the pain medicine simply wasn't doing the trick.

But thanks to Flomax, I kept pissing away, and I'm pretty sure that I passed the stone in the late afternoon on Friday. How did I not know that stone had come out of my pee hole? Well, I was in a lot of side and back pain and was pretty numb to anything downstairs (so maybe that's where all the pain medicine went to), but after that, it seemed like the pain dropped down a level.

I also think I watched ten straight episodes of Lucha Underground on this day. That part was awesome.

Saturday
The two highlights of Saturday were the two times that my wife tried to kill me. She saw me at my weakest point and thought this might be the time to finish me off, but I'm still here, typing away, letting the world know my struggle.

The first was when I asked her to do me a favor and get me ibuprofen from the store, as it was safe to combo with that weak ass Hydrocodone if necessary. She came back and tried to feed me acetaminophen, which would not be safe since the Hydrocodone already has that pain relief ingredient in it. She "claims" it was just a mistake, but she's going to have to do better than that to get rid of me.

The second was when she asked me to do her a favor. Since I was spending my days alternating between shaking from the cold or sweating puddles, my aroma was not the most appealing thing about me at the moment. She gently asked me if I could take a shower. She outsmarted me on this one, I gotta admit. I took a shower, and the shower part was okay, but getting out of the shower dropped my internal body temperature to about 17 degrees. I tried to dry and put on clothes as quickly as I could so I could hop in bed and get under the covers, but my wife was one step ahead of me and had stripped the bed to do laundry. Casey the Dog was in on the plan and she was lying on the only nearby blanket. The only thing I could do was go out to the living room and go to that vixen to hope she'd spare me a blanket. Luckily, she saw pity on me in my weakened state, and I was able to recover from her second murder attempt. She's still stuck with me.

Sunday
Sunday was a pretty good day. I was having pains, but I was taking a major step in the right direction. I was weak, but it wasn't too bad. I figured I'd be good for work the next day.

Then, as I was trying to go to sleep, sharper pain came coming back, and it just would not go away. Had this pain happened during the day, it would have been painful and inconvenient, but when you're trying to go to sleep, it is the most miserable experience. This kept me up until about 2:30 in the morning, which was not ideal.

Monday
Monday morning brought more of that pain from the night before. The pain should have stopped shortly after passing the stone, but we were now on day three after the stone had passed, and I was still suffering. This finally led me to two revelations.

1. If one Ibuprofen helped with some of the pain, then two Ibuprofen might help with all of the pain, and it certainly did. I was pounding them every four hours, but it at least made me nearly functional.

2. I also realized why I was still in pain. When people usually start feeling pain from a kidney stone, they go to the hospital or know enough to take pain medicine. When I had a kidney stone, I spent the first half hour taking turns getting slammed onto my back, and slamming somebody else on their back during wrestling practice. I then did intense ab workouts where I twisted my body while going for armbars and triangle chokes. Since I was so full of adrenaline, it took an hour before I realized something was seriously wrong with me. I am thinking that this is not the most conducive activities to avoiding complications from the kidney stone.

Tuesday
I got a little bit better, but Tuesday was nothing special.

Wednesday
I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and needed pain medicine.

I woke up at 6:30 and needed more pain medicine.

Then, I got to 10:30 and still felt fine.

11:30, still good to go.

12:30, um, this is fairly nice.

1:30, 2:30, 3:30, etc. and I just all of a sudden stopped needing pain medicine. My appetite had been pretty pathetic since this started, but I was able to eat far more than I had been eating. I still wasn't up to my normal habits, but I practically doubled what I had been surviving on.

And then I realized, hey, it's Wednesday night, I've got wrestling and jiu jitsu tonight. I considered it for about four seconds before I realized that it may be the worst idea I have ever had, and my wife may kill me if I even brought up the idea. But even though I wasn't quite ready for practice, I was finally getting back to normal.

I couldn't believe how badly a kidney stone "rocked" my world. Puns aside, it was totally miserable, and I do wish it upon my worst enemies. May they suffer like I did, so they can turn into a crybaby bitch like I did for a week.