Three weeks ago today the most intense pain I’ve EVER felt punched me in the stomach like a bolt of lightning.

No exageration.

I tried to walk it off, laid down to ease it, even tried to curl up into a little ball to make it to go away. Didn’t work and in no time at all I knew I needed help.

Matt was already gone to work and the kids were starting to rouse so I called my poor mom and awakened her with my panicked, pain-stricken plea for help.

At this point my kids were busy watching TV in the living room and I was moving around uncomfortably trying to Google my way to a diagnosis.

“Dr. Oehlschlager” (and my Google results) came to the conclusion that my appendix was sick. I was pretty sure of it because by the time my mom came over I started puking and it seemed like the pain was intensifying.

After a quick phone call to my Aunt (LPN) Mindy (our family’s go-to gal for anything medical), we hauled off for the longest……ride……ever…….to Springfield. And then waited for what felt like the longest……time……ever……in the emergency room.

Seriously, I thought I was going to die. No, I didn’t think I was going to die, I WANTED to die. The pain was that bad.

The intensity was literally equated to the peak of a contraction that never subsided.

More puking and IV pain meds later, I still was in agonizing pain. Morphine didn’t even help.

The doc’s third try at meds finally did the trick and my pain began to ease.

A few tests later, Dr. Oehlschlager/Google was proved a fraud when the CT showed a kidney stone partially obstructing my right kidney.

No exploding appendix. Just a “tiny,” jagged piece of matter making me want to cut off my toes to distract from the pain (which I think I actually told my nurse).

“It will pass,” the doctor told me with prescriptions for pain medicine and marching orders to follow up with a urologist.

And then the pain just left.

It disappeared as quickly as it came. If I wouldn’t have had the IV hangover and bandages on my arms from said IVs, it would have been like it was all a dream. Or a nightmare.

I waited (impatiently) for the stone to pass and Googled away on why this happened and what I could do to keep it from EVER happening again.

But the day I could hold my stone up in a sanitary Ziplock bag as a trophy to the pain I endured never came.

A secondary infection came, though, and so did more testing and then the threat of surgery because of the pesky stone.

I was preparing myself that I was probably going to have to have surgery the next day (at least a 75 percent chance, according to the professionals) when my urologist came back into the room all smiles with news that the turkey of a stone had already passed.

AND I MISSED IT!

The doctor had more “good” news: There are apparently two more (very small) stones waiting in my kidneys!

Ugh!

But for now, all is well.

After going through that short, yet traumatizing, ordeal I have come to the conclusion that people who have survived kidney stones need to receive a pin or a bracelet or medal or at the very least a t-shirt.

Because kidney stones are no joke!

Categories: Life on the farm

Ginia

My name is Ginia Oehlschlager and I'm a small-town gal from Missouri. Join me as I document my crazy life on the farm with my husband and four kids. I'm always looking for frugal, simple ways to live the life God set before me. Where faith, family and fun come together on the farm.