Alfson Family News

Friday the 13^th is usually a day of superstition and dread. For me, it's a day of pain and misery. I wake up with a sharp pain in my back. It feels like a knotted muscle on the lower left side of my back. Assuming I simply slept wrong, I toss and turn for awhile, trying different positions to ease the pain. All these attempts prove futile as the pain is sustained.

Eventually, I rise from my warm place of slumber and head upstairs. If I sit up, watch TV, and walk around the house, surely my back will unkink itself. Instead, the pain worsens. Moving about only seems to intensify the adverse feeling, which is now a constant drone of unrelenting tightness. Soon, I find myself on the couch, doubled over, clutching my back, and rocking back and forth slightly while my roommate Derek looks up symptoms on WebMD. He hypothesizes it's probably just a pinched nerve. At least, I should hope that's all it is. Otherwise, he concedes, it could be a kidney stone.

Derek leaves for work. I call my girlfriend. We were both going home this weekend, but were going to drive separate. Admitting to myself that I can't drive in this condition, I hope to alter our traveling plans. Alanna answers and says she's already well into her trip home. She offers to come back and retrieve me, but I'm stubborn and don't want to be an inconvenience.

Twenty minutes later I renege my position. The pain is constant with no sign of subsiding. It's nearly unbearable. There is no way I can drive home like this. I frantically call Alanna back, but she doesn't hear her phone. I ponder my options. How do I get home? The question quickly becomes irrelevant as the pain passes the limits of toleration. I need to go to the hospital.

My dad recently got new insurance under which I am also covered. However, I still don't have a new insurance card, so I call my mom. She gives me the information. I write it down on a newsletter from the local Wesleyan church.

Derek's at work. My other roommate, Andrew, is in class. Neither, understandably, answer their phones. I can't stand the pain. I can't drive, I can't stand up, I can't sit down. I need a ride to the hospital. My friend Amy answers her phone. She agrees to pick me up and drop me off at the emergency room on her way to work. The ten minutes it takes for her to arrive feels like ten hours of pure, unmitigated agony.

Dropping me off, she tells me to call her when I know anything. I agree, thank her, and limp through the doors. I lean over the receptionist's counter as I give her my information. Hunched over in pain, I'm glad that the hospital is switching over to digital records. The receptionist enters everything I tell her directly into the computer. I don't have to write anything down. My back hurts so bad I can barely see straight. There's no way I could write legibly now. All I can manage is a scribbled signature. I hand her the church newsletter when she asks for my insurance card. To my surprise, she accepts it without objection, records the information, and returns it to me.

I take a seat and wait. It hurts so much that I'm getting nauseous. A few minutes pass before a nurse calls me in. She takes my temperature and blood pressure as I sit on the bed in the examination room. The process seems to take forever. Signs reiterate that they're switching to a new records system and the nurses are not yet entirely familiar with it.

My phone rings. I ignore the large sign on the wall declaring cell phone use is prohibited in the emergency room. My mom is asking me what I've decided to do. I tell her I'm already in the ER and will call her back with an update when I know anything. The nurse is still entering information into the new computer system. She apologizes for the delay. I repeatedly hit the mattress in my distress. I calm myself and apologize to the nurse for my outburst. She says it's all right. She seems very sympathetic to my plight.

My phone rings again. Alanna says she just saw that I called and is wondering what I wanted. She becomes quite concerned when I tell her I'm in the ER. She offers again to turn around and come back. I tell her not to worry about it. I'll be okay. I'm stubborn. I don't want to be an inconvenience.

The nurse hands me a blue, plastic windsock-like bag and leaves the room. The doctor will come in shortly. He doesn't. I shift positions on the bed, but any comfort eludes me.

Finally the doctor enters the room, technically. He hovers by the door. I can't be sure he even lets go of the handle. He says it sounds like a kidney stone and he wants an X-ray and an urine sample. He leaves, closing the door on my pained please for help.

My mouth quivers as I say an endless string of half prayers begging God to relieve me of this pain. The only response I receive is the continuing, unbelievably excruciating pain. I never imagined physical pain this intense could exist. I know I'm not going to die from a kidney stone, but I can't believe pain like this can be anything less than fatal. My prayer changes. If this is it, my last day, then I want to go on good terms. I pray for forgiveness of all my wrongs, whatever they may be. I plead for last minute absolution.

The nausea climaxes. A few dry heaves echo in the room followed by several vomits of substance. Then the nurse returns. Hallelujah. She throws out my sagging blue bag and hands me a new one. She starts me on an I.V. The pain in my back is so overwhelming that I don't even notice the needle piercing my hand. She gives me something for the nausea. Finally, some relief. Any relief.

She then gives me something for the pain and leaves me to rest. I curl up into a ball on the bed. After a few minutes, the pain killer kicks in. The hurt doesn't go away, but it actually becomes tolerable. I'm so thankful.

Another nurse comes in with a wheelchair to take me to the X-ray room. The zipper and metal snaps on my jeans won't do, though, so I remove them. Cloaking me in a blanket, she wheels me down the halls. Every slight bump of the chair feels like a sledgehammer smashing against my left kidney. The pain killer is already wearing off.

I lie on a raised metal slab underneath the lens of the large X-ray machine. The nurse and technician hide behind a protective wall. The pain creeps up on me again as I do my best to lie motionless as the X-rays are taken. The nurse wheels me back to my room and I resume my place on the bed. I whimper that the pain is returning.

Several minutes later a new nurse enters the room. She asks about the pain and then informs me she's going to give me something else for it. First, though, she switches the I.V. The first bag is already gone. Once a new bag of fluid is hooked up to my arm, she injects more medicine. The name of it soars over my head, but I do catch the word “narcotic.”

Within five minutes I feel wonderful. The pain is still there, I can feel it in my back and my side. It just doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt at all. I stretch out on the bed, finally with some comfort and relief. I look up at the ceiling and the whole room spins before me. It's not a nauseating sight, though, but rather an amusing one. I giggle. Time passes without my knowledge. I know not how long I've been resting in bliss before the first nurse comes in to collect a urine sample. She helps me up and, in my loopy state, helps me walk over to the bathroom. I do my business and she helps me return to my room. She offers to turn the TV on. I decline, feeling rather content to just rest without pain. Before she leaves, I ask about my condition. She replies that the consensus is that it's a kidney stone.

My mom calls again. I inform her of the diagnosis. She seems amused by my loopy state, but tells me to call Alanna. Apparently she's been home but is already on her way back to Brookings. I call my girlfriend and she declares that she's on her way back to take care of me, no matter what I say. I inform her of the situation. She'll call back when she arrives in town. I didn't want to be an inconvenience.

A nurse enters the room. They're going to release me and let me try to pass the stone at home. She goes through the instructions with me: get a prescription for pain medicine filled and take it as necessary, strain the urine, collect the stone, and return it to be analyzed. If I'm not better by Monday, come in and they'll send me to a specialist. She says there's no way their going to let me drive home, so I need to call for a ride. I don't even have a vehicle here, so I need a ride anyway. I call Amy. She gets off work in half an hour. That's fine with me. Time has little meaning in my current state.

Within forty-five minutes Amy is taking me to Wal-Mart to get my prescriptions. I call my mom with the update and ask if the insurance information will work at the pharmacy. She offers to come up this weekend and take care of me. That's not necessary. Alanna's already on her way. I'm stubborn. I don't want to be an inconvenience.

The pharmacist asks for my insurance card. I hand her the church newsletter. She looks at me for a moment and then records the information. It'll be done in half an hour. I follow Amy around as she shops for groceries. I'm in a daze. The pain is there, but I still don't feel it. I soon start to get nauseous, though. I go sit down on a bench at the front of the store while Amy checks out.

Alanna calls and inquires about my whereabouts. I update her and she says she'll be right there. A few minutes later I see her walking toward my bench. I feel bad that she went all the way home only to turn right around and come back. I feel bad that tomorrow's Valentine's Day and I'll be stuck at home trying to pass a kidney stone and she'll be stuck trying to care for me. She's not concerned with any of that, though. She only wants me to be okay.

Amy walks by and acknowledges the passing of the baton onto Alanna. I'm in my girlfriend's care now. She helps me back to the pharmacy to retrieve my prescriptions. We head back to my house and I take up residence on the couch. Alanna tries to persuade me to eat, but I have no stomach for food. She goes off to get her food for herself. I start to become extremely nauseous. As I head for the bathroom, I hear the someone enter the house. Commencing with the awful sounding act of dry heaves and full fledged vomiting, I assume Alanna has returned. Instead, it's Derek. And he has a friend with him. I make great first impressions.

People disperse as the night goes on. I wake up early the next morning, around 2:00, in an empty house. I rise from the couch where I've been sleeping. I'm groggy, tired, and in pain. And I have to go to the bathroom. Urgently.

Stumbling in the darkness, I make it to the bathroom. Somehow in my daze I remember to use the strainer. There's a slight, brief sting. A small, blackish flake comes out. I pass the stone. I should celebrate and be happy. Instead, I'm just plain tired. I go back to the couch to sleep.

About four hours later, still before dawn, I awake again and repeat the experience. This time a larger one comes out. It's still tiny, but definitely a solid mass, like a grain of sand. Two stones. Passed. Victory. I hope.

I spend the rest of the day resting and taking naps. The pain medicine and overall pain from the experience has left me exhausted. It's a sad excuse for a Valentine's Day, but I'll try to make it up to Alanna later.

Nothing else passes for the rest of the day. The pain subsides and even vanishes, though my back is still quite sore. The next day, I collect my twin kidney stones and return them to the ER for analysis. The nurses all clamor excitedly about the “babies” I “gave birth” to. Hilarious.

So, to summarize, I'm doing just fine. I did experience the most incredible pain of my life, but now I'm much better. I'm still a little sore, but that's to be expected. Friday the 13^th was a miserable day for me. I will definitely be wary and superstitious about that date from now on. Sadly, the 13^th also lands on a Friday next month.