Fun With Kidney Stones

I was heading into work Wednesday morning when I got a little twinge in my left side. I ignored it and kept going.

By the time I got to the office, the twinge had settled in to stay. It very swiftly amped up from "twinge" to "discomfort," and from "discomfort" to "pain." I drank a water and tried to walk it off. No dice. It got worse.

I called Chi-Li and said I was leaving, I had to get to a doctor or a hospital or something. She offered to drive me. Five minutes later, we're on our way to Ceder-Sinai, which is just a few blocks from the office.

I get to the ER and sign in. The pain crosses the threshold between "ouch" and "holy-fucking-shit." It feels like someone snapped an alligator clamp on the left side of my guts and started pulling. Damn, it hurt.

A nurse takes my temp and my blood pressure. They tell me to hang out until I'm called.

The waiting room is full of people just sitting and quietly hanging around. I'm the only person there in obvious distress. To their credit, the nurses keep the line moving. But this pain is getting out of control. They call this old man. "What's the matter, Mr. Johnson?" "Oh, I guess I feel a bit dizzy."

"A bit dizzy?!" Motherfucker! I run up to the nurses and yell, "I'm in some real trouble here!" They were about to admit this woman. They put her on hold and rushed me in. As Hagakure tells us, a lot of situations can be handled by just yelling at people.

"Will you be okay on a gurney in the hall?" I didn't care. Anything that got an IV in my arm. I yank off my shirt and they stick a needle in me. A doctor comes up. I give him the low-down.

"Sounds like a kidney stone."

Here's the thumbnail on kidney stones: your kidneys form these little stones made of calcium and acids and evil. They're so small that you piss them out without ever noticing. Sometimes, one gets big enough to give you hard time on its way out. Even then, you usually don't find out it's there until it has to turn a corner half-way down the tube. It bumps around and inflicts agony. Hence, what I had.

They ask me where the pain is, on a scale of 1-10. I was tempted to say, "ten." But this kid down the hall was screaming like he was getting vivisected. I felt weak in comparison, so I said, "seven."

They gave me a drug. The nurse came back. "Where's the pain?"

"Five."

Better, but I was still lying on this gurney, gritting my teeth and rolling around in pain. It fucking SUCKED.

They gave me more of the same. The doctor came back and asked the same question. I told him: "three." He asked if I wanted him to knock the pain out completely. I didn't bother telling him that was what I was hoping for in the first place.

He stuck some morphine in me. The pain went away. Everything was good. Until it ran out. The second that drip stopped, the pain screamed right back to a "five." I waved my arms.

They gave me more morphine. The doctor gave me an ultrasound. He wanted to look at my guts and make sure it was a kidney stone, and not something more serious. He muttered: "Your aorta's where it should be."

"That's always a plus." Him: "Yeah, a BIG plus."

This security guard kept wandering over and making sure I was cool. Did I need anything? Did I have enough drugs? Friendly guy, sure... but he wasn't asking anybody else.

He comes by and asks what I do.

"I've got a kidney stone."

"Nah, man, not what you have," he said, "what you do."

"I work in the film industry."

Mystery solved: I was wearing black shoes and dark blue slacks, so he thought I was a cop or an EMT. Even after he found out I wasn't part of the gang, he was cool. He told the nurse I was going to make him "the next Tom Cruise."

He asked if I wanted to switch for a while, with him lying on the gurney full of drugs, and me in the uniform watching the patients. I didn't tell him that I'd recently played a prison guard in a feature because I fit the uniform, and the director thought I look like a Nazi.

The nurse gave me two tabs of Percocet. Man, that stuff was the shit. Warm and fuzzy, feeling no pain. Why didn't I get that in the first place?

They kept me around on painkillers for a while, to see if the stone would pass. Of the many things I expected to do with my day when I woke up Wednesday morning, sitting around a hospital for six hours waiting for a little rock to shoot out of my dick wasn't one of them.

I asked the doctor if there was a pill or something I could take that would kill the stone. He said the only real cure was drinking lots of fluids, taking painkillers and time. The nurse gleefully told me patients frequently said it was the worst pain they'd ever felt. "It's like the child-birthing process for men," she said. The doctor said, "I've heard it feels like a razor blade when it comes out." Merry Christmas.

After it was obvious the stone wasn't coming out right away, they discharged me. Chi-li came and picked me up. They told me to ask her to drive slowly and carefully. The ER was filling up with car accident cases. It was raining in LA. For a city that deals with major disasters like forest fires and earthquakes, Los Angeles is a complete pushover when it comes to standard weather. They're so used to year-round sunshine that even a drizzle gets the reporters on the news for a "Storm Watch." No one knows how to drive in it. When I went to Best Buy to get some gift cards, I saw two car accidents in five minutes.

While I was sitting on the gurney in the hospital, I saw a British couple come in. The woman kept asking if she was in Los Angeles. She got banged on the head, had a cut over her eyebrow. They had been in a cab that hydroplaned through a red light and got broad-sided by a truck. Luckily, I watched them both walk outta there a bit later.

It was interesting to just sit around and watch the rhythms of the hospital: nurses leaving and coming onto shifts, the non-stop flow of patients, the cop who came by to get a report from the truck driver and cabbie, etc. The staff was fantastic, very friendly and professional. Dr. Sam Torbati took care of me. He was great. Gold star for Dr. Sam.

I got discharged. Chi-li dropped my off at the CVS by my place. I scored the generic version of Percocet. Total cost: eight bucks.

I went home and ate more drugs. I slept in two-hour increments. It was terrible. Ken called me the next morning and told me not to come in... I was laid up, and the town was dead because of the holidays and strike.

I went to Ralphs and bought a ton of lemons. I heard the citric acid dissolves the kidney stone, either killing it completely or at least making it easier to pass.

I hung around all day, drinking water with lemon juice in it, ate drugs, slept and fucking suffered.

Here is a public message to my kidney stone: FUCK YOU, KIDNEY STONE. FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.

Yesterday, I got on a plane and came to AZ to hang with my fam for Christmas. I felt like total shit by the time I got to my parents' house. But I ate more drugs, crashed out... and woke up today feeling great.

I don't know if the kidney stone passed or not. It feels like it's gone, but I don't wanna jinx it. I've got a bit of a twinge back there right now. But is that just because my kidney's been through the wringer? Or is it still complaining about the unwanted guest? We'll see.

Take my very sincere advice, and don't get a kidney stone.