I Survived A Kidney Stone.

First off, I misspelled the word "kidney" while typing the title, and Grammarly's spell-check function quickly changed it to "kindness" stone.

Well, apparently, Grammarly never had a kidney stone because, as at least a dozen of you are about to read, kindness never came into play.

Secondly, this blog should be part of a series I have inadvertently written called "What To Look Forward To As You Age While Paying NO Regard To Your Health AND Refusing To Lose Weight"... Because, in the past, I have walked you through laser surgery, gout, colonoscopies, adult asthma, and sleep apnea... So you can now throw this (b)log on the fire we refer to as "gettin' old".

I assume  "I just got a new hip." will be next up in the series, while the final installment will be "Picking out a plus-sized coffin."

But back to the task at hand... I just got back from the hospital after spending nearly 2 days there getting a kidney stone removed through my dick, and the experience was HORRIFIC.

"Well, maybe it was just 'horrific' only because you're big pussy, Large."

Excellent guess, but one that should be summarily dismissed because it is unequivocally untrue... I may seem like a man who has never eaten a sandwich without the crusts cut off, but I have an abnormally high threshold for withstanding pain.

Broke my leg freshman year of high school... Missed nine months of classes after I snapped my left tibia and fibula in two places apiece... And I barely blinked an eye.  The ambulance medic who was first on the scene was sickened when he saw my leg bent at a 90-degree angle at both my knee and ankle, but also one more 90-degree bend about six inches above my ankle with multiple bones protruding from the skin... My leg looked like a fucking swastika and I was as cool as a cucumber.

Gout has been universally described as "excruciating", but I tolerate flare-ups like a fucking soldier.  

My asthma comes with something called a "ground glass nodule" in my right lung which sounds as bad as it feels when it is enflamed, but you don't hear me complaining, do you?

I've been in the boxing ring numerous times and suffered multiple concussions, but never a standing 8 nor was I ever knocked down.

(The Canelo thing was an outlier... That guy is a fucking animal.)

That's not to say I am a traditional "tough guy" by any stretch of the imagination... I'm allergic to apples and horses, I cry at movies, and I get a ton of pedicures... I simply take umbrage with the 'pussy' moniker, and I would like to use my aforementioned threshold to legitimize the pain level I am about to describe below.

Safe to say that the pain I experienced Thursday night was unlike anything I have ever felt in the past 50 years.

I have been having some lower back issues for the past few months, but they have been alleviated, for the most part, with over-the-counter painkillers, the new Delta9 gummies from 3Chi, and some simple stretches. 

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My back is always fucked up because my left leg has not grown since 9th Grade, so my eventual leap from 6'2" to 6'5" has left me with one leg slightly shorter than the other.  The difference is not visible to the naked eye, nor does it show in my gait… I once worked with a young lady whose right leg was 4 inches shorter than her left due to a genetic defect.  If she wasn't wearing a prosthetic stilt, she'd have to walk with one leg on the curb and the other in the street in order to avoid a dramatic limp… I called her "Kirby" (behind her lop-sided back, of course).

But even without Kirby's length dichotomy, the slightest difference in leg length can wreak havoc on your spine's alignment.

When I worked on the floor of the AMEX and the NYSE, I used to either wear a lift in my left shoe or double-up one side of the mat that was on the floor in front of my workstation in JP Morgan's "super-booth".  

Those little tweaks saved me a fortune in chiropractic visits to repair displaced hips.

But Thursday night, the pain in my back was remarkably greater and altogether different than anything I have felt in the past, so I took some Advil and began stretching out on the hardwood floor in my living room.  I felt absolutely no relief.  As a matter of fact, the pain was getting worse and more localized to my right side.

I knew right away it was a kidney stone.

I had some scans done on my lungs a few years back to measure that ground glass opacity to see if it was growing, and one of the tests scanned low enough to see that I had a kidney stone in my right kidney and a cyst on my left.  I was told neither of them was necessarily a problem but was recommended that I see a urologist at my leisure to check them out further.  I did schedule a visit, but it was eventually canceled due to a global pandemic (not my fault), and I never rescheduled after things calmed down (100% my fault).

Well… The stone got worse, as did the pain in my right side.

I told my family I was in a little bit of pain and went upstairs to lie down.  After about an hour, my wife checked on me and saw that my complexion was yellow and I was covered in sweat.  Before she said a word, I said, "I think I need to go to the Emergency Room."

Not a huge deal… I live near our local hospital and my kids are all at the age where we don't need coverage or babysitters.  My oldest was at a pool party, so my wife had asked him to cut it short and come home, in case the younger ones needed something. 

Within minutes, we were good to go but my pain was increasing exponentially.  

I could barely sit for the 1-minute drive to the ER and had to stand for the 4-minute wait before I was admitted.

By the time they had my fat sweaty ass on a stretcher, my pain level went to a solid 9.

As I waited there, giving blood, receiving an IV, and answering questions, I finally yelled out, "Can we cut to the chase and give me some fucking painkillers?!?!"

I immediately apologized but reiterated my deep desire to be drugged as I thrashed around on a stretcher that was built for a man who was at least a foot shorter than me.  My feet hung off the edge while the rest of my body gesticulated on the rubber mattress.

They finally shot me up with some Ketorolac, which you probably know as Toradol, which is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which is used for the short-term treatment of moderate to severe pain.

Whatever the fuck it is, it didn't work… So after writhing around for what seemed like an eternity and vomiting multiple times into a sickness bag, they finally hit me with some fucking morphine… Which we all know is an addictive opioid that doctors and hospitals keep pretty close to the vest.

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The morphine got me to a place where they were able to keep me still for a scan, but it was not doing the trick. 

I told the doctor, the nurse, the janitor, my wife, the x-ray technician, other patients… anyone who would listen, really… that I could feel the morphine in every other part of my body EXCEPT my right kidney… The kidney that was continuing to tear me apart.

So they finally hit me with something called either Dilaudid or Laudanum… I couldn't really hear, and at that point, I was unable to open my eyes.

I remembered briefly that Laudanum was the tincture that Wyatt Earp's wife was constantly pulling on in order to alleviate the pains of living in the Wild West.  So when the doctor asked me if I was okay being given anything that had the letters "laud" in it, I immediately answered, "I'm your Huckleberry."

And it worked… For about an hour and a half.  After which, the considerable pain in what was now my entire right side slowly ebbed back in, and then (even more slowly) faded away.

After all my labs and scans and tests came back, I was told I had a considerable-sized stone in my right kidney that was blocking my ureter, and that it would need to be removed.

And I yelled back at the doctor, "OKAY… WHATEVER…JUST GIVE ME MORE FUCKING DRUGS!"

Then I immediately apologized again… It was a real Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde rollercoaster dealing with me that night, and I'd like to formally thank the staff at The Valley Hospital in scenic Ridgewood, NJ ("Where the taxes are higher than Keith Richards!") for their patience with their patients.

("Patience" by GnR)

I could not have the surgery until the next morning, so I was transferred from the ER to a traditional room.  However, as bad luck would have it, two infants had urological emergencies that same day, so they were scheduled before me… Meaning I had to wait until 3 PM before I was operated on.  Although I had no choice, I gladly waited because I could not imagine what I learned was a 2-month-old and a 4-month-old having even a percentage of the distress I was in the night before.

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When 3 o'clock came and I was on another gurney outside of the OR, I met my doctor for what was essentially the first time, even though I had cursed at him during my pain-induced fever dream the night before.  He explained how the procedure was going to be done without an incision and exclusively through my meatus.

What's a meatus, you may ask?

Well, meatus is actually a physiological term that simply means "opening".  

Every human being has multiple meatuses (not "meatusi"… I looked it up) on their bodies.

The opening to your ear canal, your nostrils, perhaps a vagina, and even your asshole are all meatuses.

I was happy to learn that there would be no incisions involved, and I was curious to see what meatus they would be using.

Seems silly they would try to reach my kidney through my ear or nostril, and as a guy who has had multiple colonoscopies, I was kinda hoping there was a hidden portal to the kidney tucked out of sight somewhere within my previously medically violated asshole.

But nope.

They would not be going through the backdoor this time, Large.

The meatus they would be using was obviously the tiny slit at the tip of my penis that had formally been used exclusively as an exit for urine and giant child-producing ropes of cum.

I said to the doctor, "Are you sure?" and he assured me that the tiny technology he would be using would easily be able to send a series of thin wires up through my dick and into my kidney.  Then a tiny camera and some excavation tools would be sent up along those wires to remove my stony ureter-blocking nemesis.

While in there, they were also going to send up yet another tiny tool that would miraculously install a temporary stent between my kidney and ureter… Because why not?

Although I was extremely skeptical, I was also freshly shaven and pot-committed to the whole procedure, so I reminded the anesthesiologist that I had a long history of drug use and that I also lied about my weight to the nurses, so he probably needed to bump up my dose of Propofol.  And then I drifted off to sleep hoping for the best.

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.

.

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When I woke, I felt worse everywhere else on my body EXCEPT the right side of my back, and my doctor was at my bedside telling me that the procedure was a rousing success.

Since there were no nurses in recovery at the time, I asked him in a gravelly voice if my meatus and connected piss/cum tubes were big enough to accommodate all the equipment sufficiently, and he bluntly told me that I had the biggest penis of anyone he has ever operated on in his 30 years of surgery.

I was very flattered until I found out later that before me, he only operated on Auburn University alumni.

ROLL TIDE!

Giphy Images.

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I was sent back to my room where (thanks to my wife) an Italian hero and an ice-cold Canada Dry ginger ale were waiting for me.  An orderly soon followed with a tray containing grilled chicken over rice with some low-sodium beef broth, and I laughed away her silly ass.  

It was now 5 PM and I hadn't eaten or drank in 24 hours, so I delayed my low-sodium/low-cholesterol diet for a few hours more.

The staff then observed me for a few more hours before giving me the opportunity to either stay another night or go home with a basket of meds.  I chose the latter, and that is where I am now.

I can tell you with confidence that I am very uncomfortable, but not in pain.  That is unless I have to urinate.  In which case, my dark-orange urine feels like lava as it passes through my mutilated meatus, and my kidney aches as it empties through this freshly-implanted stent. 

But all of this is a small price to pay to alleviate what I just spent nearly 3,000 words trying to convince you was the worst fucking pain of my life.

The stone itself was just over 6 millimeters long and it was made of some sort of calcium… The reason I mention the makeup is my gout is a uric acid buildup and a product of my lifestyle… Plain and simple.  

HOWEVER, the calcified properties of the stone resemble those of stones my mother, brother, aunts, and uncles all had, SOOOOO the urologist informed me all of this suffering was NOT because of my diet but instead a matter of heredity.

Made me feel a little better.

I then asked my doctor, "Was I overreacting to the pain?… Am I a pussy, Doc?"

And he assured me that a woman who delivered twins naturally had a similar stone in a similar position and the pain she felt from her stone was exponentially worse than that from the two rascals that shot out of her vaginal meatus.

Again… Made me feel a little better.

Would love to chat more, but gotta go piss some bloody lava from my lacerated piss pipe.

Listen to Grammarly and be kind to your kidneys, kids… And take a report.

-Large

While I have you… In lieu of flowers, please subscribe to the Twisted History's YouTube page, and check out the latest episode: The Twisted History of Generals, which is one of the greatest things I have ever recorded…

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TAR

-L