Sunday morning I woke up feeling perfectly normal. I was lying in bed with Begonia and my phone and just lazing, when suddenly I was in more pain than I’ve ever experienced in my life. Eventually, we ended up at the ER. Eventually, I got serious pain meds, and eventually, we learned it was a kidney stone. They kept me over night for pain management (because it was that bad). By that evening, though, it was subsiding, and by the next morning’s 2nd CT, they could see it had shrunk a bit, so now I’m at home with some meds and basically waiting for this to be done.
Spending 30 hours in the hospital was not something I saw coming. And I’m still reeling a bit from how FAST something like that can happen. You know it intellectually and maybe you’ve experienced it via a loved one, but until it happens in your own body, it’s still very… abstract.
I’m thinking a lot about people who have to spend longer in the hospital; I’m thinking about people who are constantly battling a day to day chronic disease or illness that includes severe pain, which means exhaustion; I’m thinking about these bodies and how very fragile we all really are.
I wanted to share some things I observed at the hospital about medical care and myself:
Firstly, we often only hear about how horrible medical care is now. How there are too few good nurses and docs. But the hospital I went to was amazing, and I had a string of nurses and doctors that were compassionate, listened well, and just made me feel really well taken care of.
Secondly, something I noticed about myself… even in the midst of having extreme pain, I was worried about what was happening with other people around me. What?! People pleasing is deeply engrained and it kept taking me by surprise throughout this whole experience.
And finally, as we were leaving, I said to Craig, “No food tastes better than staying out of the hospital…”
I had been reading about kidney stones, and how once you have one, you’re more likely to have more. But the reason? Because only about 40% of people follow doctor’s orders or change their diets after that first one.
It reminds me of another stat: that after a heart attack, only ONE IN SEVEN people make changes that would help.
Surprises can happen. Shit happens. But there’s a space in all of this where we can make a difference for ourselves. It might be that what we do can only bring a bit of energy and comfort because whatever’s wrong isn’t going anywhere, but if we’re lucky, things we do can actually decrease our chances of these shitty surprises and even increase our health.
By “health” I mean our vitality… our ability to fully engage in our lives.
So yeah… there’s no food I wouldn’t get rid of or add in order to avoid a kidney stone again. And there’s no way I’m skipping out on movement because movement always matters; it keeps things flowing… literally.
I’m exhausted from the pain and the big time narcotics they (thankfully) pushed into my system, but I’m resting and then GAME ON. Again.