Gross Warning: The following post contains 1500% of the recommended daily allowance of personal information. Reading this post my cause mild nausea or the urge to smack Trint for telling you stuff you reeeaaally didn’t want to know.

Yesterday, I woke up with a funny feeling. Not the good kind of funny feeling you get when you think someone is going to give you a present. Not the bad kind of funny feeling you get when you’re pretty sure you left your car’s lights on all night. It was the kind of funny feeling you get when you wake up and realize you forgot to pee before you went to bed and now your bladder is contemplating suicide. The strange thing was, I did pee before I went to bed and even after peeing, the feeling was still there. Weird.

As I went through my day, I applied my years of medical training to the situation and decided I must have a mild infection “down there” brought on be dehydration. Last Saturday I spent over twelve hours at an outdoor Christian rock concert and I’m confident I got pretty badly dehydrated there. I committed to drink as much water as I could stomach for the day and see if I could “fix” the situation without medical intervention.

By the end of the day, the funny feeling was still there, but not as bad. I figured if it still hurt in the morning I would go to Care Now and get some drugs. My stomach was feeling pretty weird, but that was too be expected after drinking two or three times my normal water intake for the day.

Before bed, I felt a brand new funny feeling. This time it felt more like gas on my left side. I decided to sit on the couch and wait out the storm, so to speak, rather than share it with my wife in the bedroom.

By about 11:30, the slight pressure I had assumed was gas had turned into an intense, stabbing pain (8 out of 10 for you ER folk) in my left side and back. “Uh oh,” my years of medical training told me. “That’s where your kidneys are. Maybe your infection is worse than you thought. Or worse, maybe you have a stone. We might not be able to hold out for Care Now in the morning.”

I crawled to the bedroom (Yes, literally. Shut up! It really hurt.) and said, as gently as I could, “TAMMY! TAKE ME TO THE ER!! NOW!!! OW! OW! OW!! OWWWW!!!”

We arrived at the ER about midnight. They were really nice there and the ER didn’t seem too busy. I was taken straight back to a room. Pee in the cup, X-Ray, CT scan, and (best of all) morphine! WHEEEE! In less than an hour, I was free as a bird. The doctor came by… sometime (at that point I didn’t really care. Wheeeee!) and said, “Mr. Ladd, your years of medical training were spot on!” Okay. That’s not really what he said. But I was right. The CT scan found a golf-ball sized kidney stone, with claws and teeth and hair and a very bad attitude, making its way to my bladder. Okay, okay. Not really golf-ball sized. It was probably a little smaller than that. Probably. But it definitely had claws. Seriously.

They sent me home with some big ol’ drugs and a cute little strainer to pee in. Apparently, urologists like to collect these things and turn them into jewelry for their wives.

Today, as ordered, I stayed home from work waiting for the “blessed event”. I was no longer in pain, even without the drugs. I did follow the other prescription, which was to drink as much cranberry juice as I could without drowning in the stuff. I managed about 64 ounces between 9 AM and 5 PM. Ugh.

The delivery was not what I expected. It stung a little, but it was nothing compared to the pain from the previous night. Here’s the little bundle of joy from two different angles.

Okay, okay. Those pictures might be a little magnified. I’d say, about 20 times or so. This is probably closer to the actual size. (About 1 millimeter, the thickness of a dime.)

Anyway. I’m feeling fine now. Just a little water-logged. Well, cranberry-juice-logged, to be specific. Thanks for the prayer and concern. And I promise if this ever happens again, the pictures will be much more graphic. *wink*