Will you pull down your shorts please?

At one point in my life, I passed five kidney stones all within a span of about nine years. If that doesn't sound extreme to you, then you're not quite as sharp as you think you are. The pain of a "stone" moving through one's kidney and down through the urinal tract is as intense a pain as men will ever experience (women have childbirth as the only possible trump. I have had migraine headaches; I have had a "spinal tap" (that's where someone pokes a very large needle into your spine and draws fluid out); I broke my scapula in a motorcycle accident; I've smashed my thumb with a hammer; I've had a five-drawer filing cabinet dropped on my foot (breaking and chipping bones in my foot); I have had my "junk" traumatized a number of times in unusual ways; I have even had a needle very slowly inserted into my lower abdomen and felt it scraping around the edge of my hip bone as it went in (long story for another blog post); but none of those experiences have produced the pain of a large, jagged kidney stone slowly scraping its way through kidney, ureter, bladder and urethra. Each stone is unique. Some are large, some no bigger than a grain of sand; some move quickly and some excruciatingly slowly; but they all have one thing in common: pain!

The first time I felt a kidney stone move, I had no idea what it was. After all, I had never had a stone before. It was frightening. I was living alone at the time. The pain began so quickly and with such intensity that I was writhing in pain on my living room floor before I had time to pick up the phone and 911. I could not get up. In fact, I remember lying on my back with my feet up on the piano bench, lower back propped up with both hands (elbows on the floor below me) back arched upward, breathing exactly the way a woman giving birth breathes during peak labor pains. If I had not been so frightened and in so much pain, I would have laughed out loud at what I looked like that night. This is my blow by blow account of the night I learned what it meant to "have" a kidney stone.

At the time, I lived in a small town that was served by a very old and dilapidated community hospital. I had never been to that hospital before, and to make my first visit in the middle of the night, on a night when it seemed that I was the only patient in the entire building, was quite unsettling. It all began a little after midnight and continued throughout the wee hours of the morning until almost daylight the next day. I do not remember how I got to the hospital from my apartment that night, but I remembered almost every creepy, strange, odd, funny detail after that -- and wrote it all down two days later while it was still fresh in my mind. Here is what I wrote about my December 21, 1990 visit to the ER in Podunk, USA:

After discussing the most mundane facts of my life with a very dull and very bored individual sitting behind a computer for, oh ... I'd say about six hours ... or it may have been thirty minutes. It doesn't really matter, because every ten minutes seems like ten hours when you have a kidney stone moving. Eventually, I was asked by a young male orderly to follow him back behind "curtain number three" and to take off all my clothes. That's when I first suspected that I may be in for a long, humiliating night. The orderly handed me a hospital gown and pulled the curtain behind him as he left. I began to undress very gingerly, because everything from my naval to the middle of my thighs, in the front, the back, and all points in between felt remarkably similar to the time I took a stiff knee to the Christmas chestnuts during a sand lot football game. I took everything off except for my socks and briefs. Well, the floor was cold! ... and that "gown" with the disappearing tie strings was a little airy in the back!

I gently maneuvered myself back up onto that table -- you know the one with the delicatessen paper on it (real nice touch, by the way ... kind of gives the examination room that warm, relaxed, homey feeling), and there I waited ... and waited ... and waited. Just when I was starting to feel upset by all the waiting, a female doctor arrived and introduced herself as "Dr. Paulson". I immediately felt relieved and more than a little encouraged, not only because Dr. Paulson was more attractive than the male orderly, but also because I felt sure a female doctor would be more gentle with my junk than some meat-fisted man.

Within about sixty seconds, she had introduced herself, shook my hand, pushed on my sides and abdomen, had me recite and describe all my symptoms. She had me lie back on the table covered by the deli paper, and then grabbed a small linen sheet from a side table, draped it over my legs, pulled my "robe" up to my chest and politely asked, "Will you pull your shorts down, please?" Now this whole experience was starting to show some promise, I thought to myself.

Dr. Paulson and I hit it off right away. The next few minutes of gentle poking and feeling, pushing and rubbing was undoubtedly the closest thing to a date I had had in four months (I was recently divorced and rather lonely at the time). But just like so many of my dates and relationships with women, this rather pleasant examination made an abrupt left turn. This outwardly polite and friendly lady (but obviously twisted and sadistic human being), looked right into my eyes, and with a thinly veiled snicker in her voice, said: "Okay, now stand up and bend over the table."

Aaaww, man! ... and it had been going so well up to this point!
While bent over the table with the doctor's middle finger inserted into my butt (up to about her elbow, I think), I casually mentioned to the good doctor that the last time I had experienced anything like that was just before my last payday, when I met with the money guy at work to discuss a "gross adjustment" of my next paycheck. She chuckled and massaged my prostate gland. I tried to chuckle too, but I think it must have come out more like a grunt, because then she chuckled again at my attempt to chuckle. I didn't try to chuckle or make small talk with her any more after that, because whenever she chuckled, it made her finger jiggle in my butt ... and that's not really what you want when you're on the receiving end of a prostate exam.

The next hour I spent drinking water, pacing the floor and hoping I could pee soon, because the orderly had informed me that they needed another "specimen" before I could leave. While drinking and pacing and hoping, I was interrupted by a reasonably attractive and outgoing female radiologist who informed me that she was going to take some pictures of my lower abdomen. Haunting memories of the prostate massage fled my mind as I again felt a sense of encouragement and keen anticipation. She led me down an unpopulated, barren and strangely lit hallway, much like the sets I have seen in every sci-fi hospital movie since 1965. We turned and entered a room that fit the same description, where I was, once again, asked to lie atop a glass table and pull down my underwear.

All seemed to be going well as Donna, after adjusting various contraptions and machines, stood beside the glass table, draped a sheet over my legs and torso and began to gently probe my sides and abdomen.
"Tell me where you hurt", she said. "I don't want to touch you too hard where it hurts."
"Here?" I nodded yes.
"Here?" Again I nodded yes.
I must have started "daydreaming" at that point, because the next thing I remember is feeling a sharp pain in my lower abdomen and letting out a small yelp. As my mind quickly came back into focus, Donna, the radiologist, was quietly insisting, "Well ... tell me where it is so I won't touch it!"
Without missing a beat, I suggested that if she was really that nervous about touching "it", then maybe we should slow down and start with just having coffee sometime. She smiled warmly and proceeded to inform me that her next day off was Thursday. I think I drifted off again after that.

By the way, Donna later told me that the pictures came out great, except that the left kidney was slightly obscured by some "gas formations". I apologized for the gas formations and asked if there was any chance I could get a sheet of wallet-sized prints and an eight by ten glossy before Christmas. She said she would see what she could do.


... to be continued.