First kidney stone

I had and passed a kidney stone last Saturday night. It was a trippy experience characterized by feelings of extreme pain, panic, urgency, defeat, restlessness, helplessness, and dependency. I know that I did not like the experience but once it was over I felt as if I could remember it objectively without any traumatic memory, which I felt was not expected considering how intensely horrible the experience was.

The previous weekend I had stayed with Marcus at the place where he was housesitting and I did again this weekend. Friday was cool. On Saturday we walked to Hoboken and toured damage from the hurricane and visited coffeehouses. I went to this one place which was outfitted like a proper coffeehouse with an impressive-looking espresso machine with espresso cups on top of it. I was happy, because most of the coffeehouses in the area try to serve espresso in paper cups. I ordered an espresso and the barrista reached for a full-size coffee cup and I asked him about the little cups, and he said that the machine makes big espressos. I did not really know what he meant but I let him do his thing, and he pulled an espresso which was so long that it filled most of an 8-ounce cup. It was horrible. I tried to drink it but gave it back to him and he asked me if I liked it and I told him no, and he did not ask anything further. It seemed to me that someone had invested a lot of money in setting up the shop as a coffeehouse where people hang out, but then completely disregarded any attempt to have staff learn to use their nice equipment. We went to the headquarters of academic publisher Wiley which was in the area.

Marcus was telling me that lobster was inexpensive in this region of the country and that it was a privilege to be able to prepare it so we bought a lobster. I had never cooked a lobster and had hardly eaten any. We cooked the lobster and ate it and it was tasty and fun. Then we started watching a movie. During the movie I felt like I had to pee so I went to the bathroom and tried to pee, and hardly peed at all. I thought it was strange but I forgot about it and just went back to the movie. Not long after I had to pee again, and again the same thing happened, and in hindsight that was really strange because never in my life do I recall ever feeling the need to pee then going to the bathroom and not peeing. For some reason, I again thought nothing strange was happening at all. I sat back on the couch to watch the movie and after some time I began to notice that I was having back pain on one side of my back. It felt like I had slept on an uncomfortable bed or in an uncomfortable position, and I recognized the feeling as the sort that I might feel only for a few minutes after waking in the morning from a bad night of sleep. Again, for some reason, I did not think anything was strange despite my never having felt this feeling in any context other than waking in the morning and only for a few minutes. After thinking about the pain I realized that again I wanted to pee, and this the third time in perhaps forty minutes. I went to pee and nothing came out, and then I realized that something was weird.

I told Marcus about it and he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that I was not sure but that I wanted to try lying down. We went upstairs and lied down and he asked me questions, and I realized that my back hurt a lot on one side. I suggested that it might be a kidney stone and he checked the symptoms online, and they seemed to match. I was familiar with kidney stones because I had watched Lee have about ten of them. Another theory was that I had a shellfish allergy only realized because of my first eating of a lobster. Another theory was that this was related to a pulled groin muscle injury which I had from a new exercise I was doing earlier in the week. Another theory was that I had blue balls, which I thought was absurd because I did not believe the condition existed. Marcus proceeded to tell me that he had experienced this condition from being horny for an extended period of time, followed by a period of sexual arousal which did not end in orgasm, and ending with him being in discomfort and pain for some hours. I was not keen on the idea of having either an allergy or a kidney stone so I jerked off. That did not help the pain at all but at least I was not horny anymore in addition to the pain, so it seemed like a good response.

I got in the shower because I thought warm water might help me pee, and it did feel good, but my back pain was getting worse. I called Lee and he told me to go to the hospital. I had Marcus call a taxi and we went to the nearest hospital. After the call the pain seemed worse, and then felt panicked, then I felt the pain increase perhaps because of my panic. I felt nauseated and I attributed the sickness in my stomach to the pain, and I vomited a lot. The yummy lobster suddenly seemed like a horrible thing to eat. I have heard of people being sick after eating something and then having an aversion to this thing, and although it is not rational I now feel like lobsters taste like vomiting kidney stone pain and would not want any more.

By the time the taxi arrived I was completely ready to go to the hospital as the pain and urgency had escalated into a completely captivating focus of my attention. I very much wanted to pee and was faced with the realization that my body does what it wants and I had been going through life assuming that my instincts would always direct it at my behest, and that now when I attempted to bee if my body did not pee then I had little control over doing anything other than willing that the physical world do as my brain request.

We went to the emergency room and the person at the front desk asked too many intake questions and had too little urgency to match the needs of my emotional state. I had seen this many times before with Lee, in that people working at the hospital are there to do a job like any other and people visiting a hospital are there for an intense emotional event, and there is a discongruency between the sense of importance which the patients feel versus what the workers feel. I reflected on this as it happened and I accepted it because I know some of the systemic problems of hospital management but Marcus asked why it was necessary that they question me for demographic information at all. I did triage and the nurse was nice to me. I had to wait in the lobby for about fifteen minutes and I spent that time becoming increasingly restive as I felt compelled to refuse to sit down and to repeatedly attempt to visit the toilet and try to pee. Somehow, going to the toilet and making the motion of preparing to pee seemed like a better idea than just standing and not peeing, even though both actions had the same result of me not peeing.

I got a bed in the emergency room before many others and I wanted to lie down. I took off winter clothes and I put on comfortable bed clothes and I was feeling confused. I vomited in various buckets stored around my bed in my space in the emergency room, then I wanted to pee some and I did but not enough for comfort, then I laid down. I could not figure out how to wear the hospital gown so I wore no shirt. Marcus could not figure out the gown either and I was cold so I got into the blanket. The pain was bad and I wanted to pee so I got up every few minutes to try to pee in a bucket near my bedside, and I had this urge to be on my hands and knees shirtless and barefoot on the cold hospital floor with my dick out of my pants over a bucket, as if that were the position in which a person could most easily pee. Never in my life have I tried to pee from a crawling position but I get in this position after having tried other strange ways to pee before this point and somehow I pee some. It was a huge relief even though I hardly peed at all. I got back in bed and the pain was worse. I told Marcus to talk to me an he started talking about anything, and I listened to him. I asked him if he would stay with me and he said of course. I knew that I would be in the hospital till I peed normally and that probably that would be within 6-8 hours; I am not sure what he expected but I think most people would expect not so long.

Sometime after this the pain got even worse and already it had been the worst pain I had ever imagined even since I was back at the apartment. I felt so destitute and alone, but at the same time very much comforted that Marcus was with me. I felt like crying so I started to cry a little, but then suddenly I could not help it and I cried a lot and hard. I suppose that did what it was supposed to do because it summoned a doctor to me which was the first I had seen of one since I came to the emergency room and had been waiting perhaps 20 minutes going through perhaps 8 attempts to pee in that time. I was immediately catheterized in the inside of my elbow and given fluid, and then with that they gave me a drug. At some point I signed some papers – they have me three documents to sign and one in multiple places. Someone told me what they were but I was completely unfit to understand anything and would have agreed to or done anything, and I signed the papers somehow. I perceived the drug to have no effect whatsoever, but Marcus later told me that the drug visibly relieved me instantly. By my memory, I still felt the entirety of the pain, and minutes after being injected I recognized that I still felt the pain but somehow the drug had prevented the pain from capturing all of my attention as it had been. In other circumstances I had taken opiates, and this drug was not an opiate. Opiates, I think, actually make the pain imperceptible. That is not what this drug did, nor did it seem to have any other effect on my body or mind that I could perceive.

I went to sleep. When I woke Marcus told me that I had slept for an hour, and I realized how physically exhausted I must have been because I awoke to notice that I was less exhausted now, and I thought that was strange. From my perspective, I had not slept, so what I felt was that I was suddenly relieved of tiredness when I had not even noticed how tired I was. I stood up and peed a little but much more than I had since this began, and I thought this was a good sign. The doctor had requested that I have a CT scan and because of the Choosing Wisely program I was trying to think of whether I was supposed to question CT scans for kidney stones or not. I knew the material rather well and felt sure that there was no kidney stone advice in it, but I resolved to ask the health workers anyway if it were necessary for me to have this. They told me yes and it seemed entirely reasonable because if I had a large kidney stone then I would want it detected. Another view was that a large stone was very unlikely as this was my first kidney stone, I have no family history of this, and I was already peeing a bit. I had the CT scan some time later.

Later still I peed normally. What a relief. My pain was managed by the drug by this time but after I peed I knew that pain was gone. I felt nothing of the stone passing. I had been drinking lots of water continually and not so long after that I peed fully again, and was feeling very pleased with myself. The doctor came and made me take off my pants and underwear and poked me around and asked me about my groin and explain the pulled muscle, because the CT scan detected it. Then the doctor wrote me a script for a painkiller and a vasodilator. Eight hours had passed and I got dressed and went home. Marcus and I napped and in the morning we went to the pharmacy and grocery store to get juice and my scripts filled. In the end I took none of my prescribed drugs because I was peeing normally. In the course of a night and some hours I had experienced the most awful physical pain, the weird experience of having my body tell me to pee but not respond to my command to pee, and the strange experience of being in a public place vomiting and trying to pee on everything while people go about me doing their normal business as if a crying vomiting screaming man with his dick out is normal behavior for the location because no one paid special attention to me except on my request. Thanks Marcus for being with me – I would have felt so destitute if I had been without a friend.

I went to work on Monday and I felt like I had just returned from a long trip and had learned and experienced many things after being a long time gone. Everyone I met seemed to have been so far away for so long, and it was as if I recognized them all anew. I felt as if I had traveled for a long time but thinking back I had no particular memories except the sensation of return and being reminded of old things. I have no health insurance. I wonder what they will bill me? I am getting paid enough to be healthy but living in New York is not cheap and if I were working in Seattle for a lot less money I think that I would be retaining more extra income than I am here, just for everything being more expensive in New York.