Saturday, September 09, 2006

Running Again

Looks like the worst of the summer heat is behind us now. We’re finally seeing thermometer readings below 80 degrees early in the morning. Praise. This morning I celebrated with my first run in about 2 months. Actually, it was more like a runwalkrunsweatgaspwalkrun, but I made it through the whole 4 miles without barfing and that’s good enough.

Last year about this same time, I did the same thing, also went on my first run after several weeks of not running. That night I ended up in the emergency room with serious back pain, peeing blood. The jolting from my run had dislodged a kidney stone and said stone was scraping its way down my urinary tract, causing me just a teensy bit of discomfort in the process.

The medical professionals I saw over the next few days weren’t terribly concerned about my condition. To them, my stone wasn’t a very interesting stone. It wasn’t big or pointy or stuck someplace where it could do serious damage to my plumbing. It wasn’t doing anything unexpected. It was just a boring, vanilla, garden-variety kidney stone, making its way through the urinary tract, causing some expected discomfort. No big deal. To them.

To me, it wasn’t boring at all. This stone was a brand new experience. This was more pain than I had ever felt before. Something was seriously wrong in there. Hellooo people?? I’ve got a ROCK stuck in my body over here. It’s not supposed to be in there. Get some expert on the phone and consult. Maybe I need to be air-lifted to the Mayo Clinic?? At least scurry around a little bit. STOP YAWNING AND ACT CONCERNED!!

I spent the next two weeks stoned on Vicodin and peeing into a plastic funnel with a screen at the tip. The doctor wanted me to capture the little fucker on its way out, so he could tell me what kind of stone it was. Those stone-catching funnels are not designed well for the female anatomy, especially when you’re messed up on opiates. I ended up peeing on my hands every single time, peeing down my leg as often as not, and generally splattering urine everywhere. It was even worse on the few days I went to work during those two weeks. How do you inconspicuously take a big white plastic funnel with you every time you go to the rest room? And I was going every 20 minutes because I was drinking so much water. I settled on sticking it in my backpack and just taking the whole thing with me. I don’t even want to know what my coworkers imagined I was doing in there. Probably something a lot more interesting than peeing all over myself and my belongings. Yeah.

Anyway, I’m hoping to make it through the next 24 hours without an emergency room visit. Stay tuned.

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