- My dad's support pillows for his knee while he was recovering from knee replacement, which were conveniently left on the bathroom floor. They made for great pillows while I laid on the bathroom floor in pain on Thursday afternoon.
- A mother who is more than willing to violate the posted speed limit for the sake of her daughter.
- An emergency room less than 8 miles away.
- An empty ER with no one else in line.
- Joe Boxer sweatpants. That was the best $4.80 I have ever spent at the thrift store. While I was waiting for a CT scan, the tech asked me if I had any buckles or rivets on my pants that I would need to remove before we got started. Dripping with sarcasm, I said, "No, I wore these pants today with an elastic band because I planned on this, ya know."
- Dilaudid painkiller straight into my body via IV.
And that's just the beginning of the list.
Y'all. Kidney stones are straight from the pit of hell. It's like the Wicked Witch of the West and her legion of monkeys were unleashed on my insides - a hundred times over. Everybody's been saying that the pain from kidney stones are worse than childbirth. If that's the case, then there are exactly 0.0 children in my future.
I found myself alternating between the bathroom floor and the hallway Thursday afternoon, listening to everyone else in the house laugh and chat after Thanksgiving lunch. Meanwhile, I was praying for the rapture. Either that, or a tranquilizer straight to my brain. I finally couldn't hack the pain anymore, still not knowing what was happening to my body, and after losing my lunch several times, we abandoned the family festivities and headed for the ER to get some answers.
Pretty much every night since last Thursday, from the hours of 6:00 pm to 2:00 am, I have wished I could either die or that I could slice my own side open and cut the stone out myself. I have no idea what it is about the nighttime, but my body unleashes unimaginable pain that even painkillers can't seem to touch. I thought I had been through some pretty vicious doses of pain in the past related to my back, but this - this pain is in a category all its own.
Do not, under any circumstances, ever put 'have a kidney stone' on your bucket list. Instead, you should beg and plead with God that the angel of death would pass you by and that he would be merciful and spare you from ever experiencing kidney stones.
I was reminded via Barnabas Piper's Twitter feed [quoting David Gibson] of how quickly gratitude can slip away from us if we do not pause to be grateful for the smallest of things : "If we are not grateful for the little things, it is only a very short step to no longer being grateful for anything. When we do not enjoy and savor and love and laugh and delight in the little things, then we are headed toward losing our delight in anything."
Since I don't want to lose delight in anything, I'm going to choose to delight in the little things. I'll continue my list:
- Timing. At least this didn't all happen the week before, which would have been during my largest work event of the year, a national conference where I worked over 65 hours in 5 days and was responsible for 100 different vendors. Ain't nobody got time for a kidney stone in the midst of that.
- My parents newly-remodeled basement, which has provided ample room to pace and writhe in pain on plush carpeting.
- Water. I've been drinking enough water to rival that of a woman who just found an oasis in the desert.
Even in our great pain, there are still things for which we can be thankful.
I'll keep telling myself that.
Please feel free to plead with the God of the heavens above on my behalf to throw some water on the Wicked Witch that has currently taken us residence in my guts otherwise known as a kidney stone.
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