I actually wrote this about three years ago on my MySpace blog, and it's still the funniest thing I've ever written. Someone I know has a kidney stone problem she found out about today, which prompted me to move this over here since a: I haven't posted for a long time and b: It's funny enough to repost. I had much more fun writing this than the actual experience was.
Kidney-Stone-O-Rama!
So yesterday I apparently got a kidney stone.
I'm OK, but it was a frightening day. At least now I know nothing is really wrong with me.
Here is the account of my crazy medical crisis day.
Part I: In which the unquenchable fires of justice threaten valuable real estate.
Trust me on this: The last thing you ever want to feel when you wake up is burning in your urethra.
Let's face it. I'm a 28 year old guy. The center of my entire universe is my penis. It's the original multitool. This is very valuable body real estate, and it's just not supposed to burn. So when I wake up at 645am to feel the unquenchable fires of justice building inside me, my first thoughts on reaching full consciousness involve syphilgonorrcancerherpesitis, or a really angry sperm with a switchblade.
Once I actually wake up, I realize the switchblade option is slightly unrealistic, but I can be excused for failing to think or react rationally when there is burning in my penis.
I stumble to the restroom, there to look dumbly down at Hercules, but there's any number of reasons this can be happening. So I attempt to pee.
Still waiting….
Still waiting….
Shifting bladder muscles to overdrive and grunting…
OK. One drop. This is not good.
I'm still rationalizing to myself. Maybe I don't need to go, despite all evidence to the contrary. I dress myself, gather my books and computer for my eight am government class and drive to campus. This has got to be just my body protesting against waking up at 645am. Everything's fine.
Really, it's fine.
Oh God, here comes the burn again.
Part II: In which the hero of the story attempts self-diagnosis of his bladder in a crowded classroom.
I love campus-wide Wi-Fi.
I take a seat near the back of the lecture hall and fire up my laptop. Being an eight-am freshman required course, half the class has laptops out. Supposedly, we're all taking notes on the lecture. In reality, everyone is on myspace, facebook and various instant messengers complaining to everyone else in the world who got stuck with an 8am class.
I, on the other hand, am frantically googling 'burning penis' and other classics of search engine lore, trying to find out why my lower torso feels like it's been bitten by one of those spider-crab parasite things from Cloverfield.
It only gets worse as the professor starts lecturing. Pretty soon, my bladder starts throbbing like a Scotsman is using it for a bagpipe and I've got pain on my right lower torso that's making me wonder if one can actually amputate a torso.
According to the internet, this isn't possible, exept for some old japanese manga I found of chicks with metal torsos. There really is a fetish for everything in Japan.
WebMd says my symptoms could indicate appendicitis. I have no great love for my appendix, but this would just not be a good time for it to explode. Exploding body parts are not a fun thing to happen. I think I feel a freak out coming on.
I want to try to make it through the class. I really don't want to be that guy who walks out from the back of the classroom mid-lecture while everyone stares at him and mutters 'let the shunning begin'. This runs contrary to the primary law I adhere to in life: Don't Be That Guy. I would have to walk down the steps to the front of the room and cross in front of the professor to escape the lecture hall. I will be shunned.
I'm going to have to Be That Guy.
I quietly pack up everything and slip my jacket on, and as quietly as I can make my way down the steps. Unfortunately, when you've got an overstuffed gigantic backpack, you feel like an angry troll is hammering your bladder and you're wearing big ass-kicking Goth boots, it's hard to be quiet and unnoticeable. The professor never breaks stride in his lecture, but I feel a hundred sets of eyes burning into my back.
They don't burn as badly as my loins do, though, so I make my intrepid course forward to the door and try not to run as I sight the men's restroom in the distance.
Nope, Hercules still isn't working. I have a vision of my body slowly being poisoned by whatever's left of everything I've drank in the last week. Given the amount of beer I consumed on my birthday a few days ago, this can't be good.
It takes me ten minutes to gather the will to leave the bathroom and walk back to my car, put my ginormous (this week's sign of the apocalypse: This has actually been added to the dictionary) backpack in the back seat, light a cigarette, and curse everything below and slightly above my belt.
Part III: In which the hero has to describe the burn to his hot Korean doctor.
Nothing in my twenty-eight years of life prepared me for a conversation with my mother that begins with the sentence "Mom, my urethra is burning."
Still, given her past as a dialysis technician, I figure if anyone knows what I should do, it's her.
I describe my symptoms to her and she tells me if I can't get an appointment with my doctor soon, I need to go to the Emergency room. Easy for her to say. She has military medical coverage. My work medical plan, however, is provided by Billy Bob's Used Furniture and Medical Equipment of Tulsa, Oklahoma, or some equally fly-by-night operation. Thanks, HR department.
I call my dad; he says pretty much the same thing. Apparently I've got a family history of kidney stones from both parents I didn't know about.
I drive to the University clinic; they don't open until nine. Then I call my doctor. They can get me in at 1145. So much for my 1100 and 1230 classes.
I go home and try the restroom once more. This time, we have success. Not much success, but it is amazing how satisfying it is to be able to take a leak when you have previously been unable to. I now konw what it's like to be eighty. I also know why my grandfather was so pissed off the last decade of his life. It wasn't that his grandson was an utter failure at life and unworthy to be his namesake; it was merely an inability to use his dick.
I've never understood why I have to be weighed, temperature taken, blood pressure and pulse taken, every time I go to the doctor. Even when I went to get my referral to a psychologist for ADHD treatment, I go through the drill. All I want is for someone to make my penis stop burning.
Wow, that's a sentence I never thought I'd write. But wait, here comes the awkward part.
My doctor is about my age (late twenties). She just joined this practice a year ago, to replace my former doctor, who retired. She's fresh out of medical school. She's Korean, and we all know my thing for oriental chicks.Especially intelligent ones, and she IS a doctor.
I now get to describe to super-hot lady doctor my symptoms.
I relate the story to her awkwardly, trying to find every euphemism I can think of to describe my nether regions, and she reacts to it professionally, of course, but that doesn't make it any less awkward. She tells me it's probably kidney stones, and I have to get a urinalysis.
Fucking stupendous.
There's nothing in the bathroom that tells me what I should do with my plastic cup full of urine, so I walk into the hall holding a plastic cup full of yellow liquid. Good times. My doctor is looking at a chart at a workstation in the hall, several other attractive nurses are also doing various medical stuff, and I'm standing there looking like a guy whose crotch has betrayed him, carrying a cup of my urine.
"Oh, no, you're supposed to leave it on top of the toilet," the doctor says, and I can feel my face turning twelve different shades of crimson.
"There's no sign," I said. "I'm sorry,"
"I should have told you," she said. I placed the cup in the bathroom and returned to the exam room to study statistics and wait for the doctor to return.
She comes in a few minutes later. "There's blood in your urine," she announces. This is not something you ever want to hear from your super-hot lady doctor.
"It's something with your urinary tract. Probably a kidney stone since you said your family has a history of them. I'm sending you over to Kennestone Hospital for a CAT scan."
"OK..." i respond. Having never gotten a CAT scan, I'm picturing torrents of weird radiation and machines that look like torture devices from Star Wars.
"I'll give you a call as soon as we get the results back from Kennestone." she says.
"OK," I respond. I slink out of the doctor's office, convinced every single woman in the place has seen my bloody urine and heard about my plight. God, I hate life.
Part IV: In which the hero of the story makes his parents wish they had used a condom.
Even in pain, I can't let an opportunity to screw with my parent's heads pass me by. So I dial my mom's number, knowing she's worried sick about me.
"Ben? You OK?" She asks. I put on the most worried voice I can muster.
"Mom...how soon can you be in Atlanta?"
"Three hours, why?" she asks. Her voice pitches up and, being the youngest son, still 'the baby' in her eyes, I know she's freaking.
"Um, it's bad. Real bad." I respond.
"What's wrong?"
"They're going to have to do surgery today. It's really bad."
"I'll be on my way in a few minutes..." She's interrupted by hysterical laughter. I just couldn't hold it in any longer."
"Benjamin Boisseau Bjostad!" she yells at the top of her lungs.
"I couldn't resist, mom. They think it's a kidney stone. No big deal. At least I know what's wrong."
"You've got to stop doing this before I run out of anything but gray hair."
"I win," I reply. I then call my Dad and repeat the whole process.
If any of you, my readers, ever have kids, hope and pray they're not like me. This is the best I've gotten them since the April Fools Day I called them both to tell them my college girlfriend was pregnant.
Part V: In which the hero finds out he will most likely survive.
So I got the CAT scan (which wasn't nearly as scary as I thought, although the machine is intimidating; it looks like the thing that Arnold Schwarznegger used in Total Recall), and the call from my doctor. I've got a very small kidney stone that will pass on its own. It still hurts, but it's much more bearable now that I know why it does; when I have unexplained pain in that region, it qualifies as a bad thing. But I'm OK.
Things Ive learned this week:
*Kidney stones hurt
*CAT scans aren't scary
*My medical coverage sucks.
*Cloverfield is the greatest movie ever.
Now I'm off to work. Which is the mental equivalent of a kidney stone. Yay.
***
update: Almost three years later, I still occasionally get them. And they still suck.
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