the darkest time

it was the darkest time of my life. it began suddenly, without clear foresight of thought and with complete disregard of my personal happiness. i let this dark lifestyle rule me for two entire years before i finally realized that there are some things you always take risks for.

the darkness began thus...

one sunday morning in september, 1997, i awoke to a very uncomfortable pain in each side; i had fallen asleep on the couch the night before, so i figured i just slept wrong. it was a strange pain, one i couldn't remember ever having.

i tried to ignore the pain, tried to think about other things, pretended it wasn't there. i was a senior in college, taking 18 hours and working 20, so i easily found distractions. but when i had nothing on my mind, a lull in my brain activity, the pain would present itself as if it had never left.

my ailment grew, exaggerated itself with every step i took, punished me if i skipped to geology or jumped up too quickly at the end of advanced accounting. the pain compounded itself and refused to subside. by wednesday, i walked at a crawling pace so as not to awake the demon living in my sides; i finally made an appointment with my doctor for friday, and friday could not come quickly enough. i ate spaghetti for dinner wednesday night and gingerly made my way to bed.

in the middle of wednesday night, the nausea awakened me with brute force; i was immediately in the bathroom, head hung over the toilet, crying and puking and holding my sides. i prayed that someone would kick me in the shins or stomp on my toes, anything to stop the excruciating hurt this devil was putting on me. i saw my dinner, intact, and that scared me, because i realized i was not digesting food. what was wrong with me?

the psycho X called the doctor at first light thursday morning and insisted that they see me right away. so someone (i don't remember who) drove me to the doctor's office thursday morning, which in retrospect was a little silly; i should have been in the emergency room. i was a pathetic mess in the waiting room, my body haphazardly splayed across a chair, legs extended, head thrown back, eyes closed, tongue hanging out, glass of water for nursing barely hanging on in my careless grip. they worked me in right away with the on-call doc, whom i worship to this day.

a really nice nurse walked me to the patient room, and the doctor came in immediately and requested a pee sample. the nurse had to walk me to the bathroom, because i was having such a hard time walking on my own; i'm sure she was thankful that i was able to take my own sample unassisted. she waited outside the bathroom door and propped me up on my way back to my room.

the doc came in and started checking me out. i was running a high fever. he started listening to my heart and lungs, checking my glands, prodding different spots on my fragile bod. he sat me up and karate-chopped my back; the devil started thrashing about and hissing, and the doctor only survived my doing the same because i was too weak to inflict real pain. had i owned one ounce of strength, i would have body-slammed the good doc and asked him politely to never do that again. instead i just yelped, and he stopped torturing me.

doctor H let me lie back down and asked if i would let him feel around my stomach. "uh-huh." like i could have stopped him. he started pushing around and asked if i would mind unbuttoning my shorts so he could feel around my ovaries. "doctor, i will strip naked and dance on this table for you if you will just make the pain stop." he laughed at that and said that wouldn't be necessary.

doctor H told me there were four possibilities: mono, pneumonia, a kidney infection or pregnancy. i never thought i would pray to have pneumonia, but i was. "please God, don't let me be pregnant, anything but that. please let me have pneumonia instead." i'm not lying.

he went away for about an hour, and i covered my eyes from the stupid bright lights that they put in doctors' offices just to torture patients and went to sleep. when the doc came back, he told me i had a kidney infection, and i almost kissed him. he also told me that if i'd waited any longer to come in, he would have had to hospitalize me. instead, he put me on floxin (a cipro relative) and vicodin for the pain.

the recovery process was an unfortunate sequence of events. the meds he gave me said to take 1 antibiotic pill per day and up to 2 vicodin pills; i did exactly the opposite and took the floxin twice and the vicodin once. i do not recommend this, as the puking recommenced and did not stop for a couple of days. incorrectly medicating myself also caused me to swear off of V-8 Splash for a long time, as i first tried it during my pukefest.

i, of course, wanted to research this whole kidney thing so it would NEVER happen again, so i asked around, looked online, formulated my own ideas. i decided that to ensure that i would never ever ever have to go through this horrendous ordeal again, i had to give up drinking carbonated beverages.

so i quit. cold turkey. no cokes (for you non-Texans, that means no soft drinks, pop, sodas). ever. not even small little sips from someone else's can when they weren't looking. zilch-o on the coke-o.

those were dark times; i didn't know just how dark and miserable my life was until 1999 when i popped the top on a Coca-Cola Classic and took my first drink of that hard, bitter goodness. i've never tasted anything so wonderful in my entire life. i don't need to tell y'all that i will never turn my back on Cokes again.

unless they keep raising their prices.

Comments

[Andy]

I once stubbed my toe in my old apartment. It hurt for about 30 seconds. :) I have no point. Glad to hear you're drinking Coke again. It is a magic elixir.

[LC the Humble Devildog]

Sarah,

You are a tougher man than I. I have passed two kidney stones, and the pain incapacitated me in about 20 minutes.

The best (and only good) thing about kidney stones is that they give you morphine (or hydro-morphone, a synthetic morphine) for the pain. All other painkillers bow before the King Painkiller, Morphine. Oh, and vicodin for a week isn't too bad, either.

Although, I got about 3 times the dose of vicodin when I had my gallstones...

[sarahk]

devildog, i'm sure that kidney stones hurt worse than my kidney infection, though i would have thrashed you for saying so at the time.

andy, you crack me up, but you already knew that.

[Lillian]

K........... so I have had ....... and I kid you not.. 19 kidney stones since last June... I recall the first few times just hurlin' on the nurses who told me I had to wait to get my drip running........... had lots of lithotripsy and an arsenal of morphine... spent 10 days in house with a self medicating morphine drip! I highly recommend it! I was sending people emails from the hospital with dialogue from whatever I happened to be watching on Hospital TV at the time (how to have a baby, do you have a bladder control issue)... was GREAT fun.

[Jamieson]

I'm sorry Sarah!!! Pain like that sucks. When I turned 30 I told my wife I was getting old. She told me to knock it off. In a few weeks I was wishing to die, just to not feel kidney stone pain. Worse yet, they had to go in and get it. Using existing openings.

And morphine was like a glass of water to me. Vicodin and Percocet were little better. Demerol is the only thing!

[sarahk]

oh that all sounds so painful.

[LC the Humble Devildog]

Jamieson,

If morphine was like water to you, then it wasn't morphine. Doctors and hospitals only give morphine to patients who REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need it. Morphine is such a good painkiller and muscle relaxant, in sufficient doses, it will make your heart relax so much, it stops beating.

If you've seen Saving Private Ryan, in the scene where Wade, the medic (Giovanni Ribisi, if that helps any) is shot, he is asked what he would like them to do to help him. He responds "I would like a little more morphine, please." Now, if you were paying attention, you notice that Captain Miller and Sergeant First Class Horvath (Toms Hanks and Sizemore, respectively) exchange glances, and Capt. Miller has to tell SFC Horvath "Do it", which Horvath does, reluctantly. Now, why is this important? Because they had already given Wade one morphine syrette, at 10cc Intra-Muscular, and he was asking for 10cc more...which is a lethal dose. To give you an idea of how little 10cc is, medics keep MULTIPLE syrettes in their mouths in cold weather, to keep the morphine liquid. 5 syrettes will fit in the front pocket of your bluejeans, with room to spare, and almost no visible bulge.

Morphine kicks butt, and the only painkiller better than it is WAY more addictive. (Heroin)