Stones

So- as I briefly mentioned yesterday, the weekend had been pretty rubbish. But how on earth could I possible improve on it?

I know- why don’t I wake up at 4am, Sunday morning with a stabbing pain down the right hand side of my abdomen. That should round off the weekend nicely!!

Honestly, I can safely say that I have never experienced such excrutiating pain and after a while of wondering whether I should go to the hospital, the pain became so intense, I realised that I had better get there quickly. So, I jumped in the car, managed to defrost the car windscreen (still in pain) and made my way through Belfast’s empty roads to the hospital. There is something incredibly eerie about a city’s deserted streets, that makes me think I’m in some apocalyptic movie.  But the deserted streets were an absolute blessing and I got to the hospital relatively quickly, parked the car and dragged myself into A & E. Not the most fun place to be on a Sunday morning, and judging by the other people in the waiting room, we were all in a pretty bad way! Shifiting around in my seat, feeling that I needed to constantly pee, but being unable to do so, was extremely frustrating and very painful. Then I vomitted twice.

Eventually I was seen by the doctor who took my blood pressure and asked the usual questions. Another nurse took a blood sample and I have to say getting a needle pushed into my arm, was welcome relief from the relentless pain in my side. 

The blood tests all came back normal and showed nothing untoward and after a while talking with the Doctor she came to the conclusion that it was likely to be kidney stones! It was at that moment I had to ask for pain relief immediately as it was now getting worse. After getting some, She then sent me to X-RAY- where on arrival I managed to get myself locked into a deserted wing of the hospital, where a cleaner had to let me out – it was not going well. The X-RAY showed nothing untoward but she explained that sometimes kidney stones wouldn’t show up on the x-ray. So after several hours in the hospital and finally feeling slightly better ( I think the pain relief was kicking in ) I went home clutching my box of pain killers and managed to drive back home through rush hour traffic.

After a few more hours of pain and intermittent dozing- I managed to go to the toilet- YAY! and the pain now has almost gone, with just a dull pain remaining in my lower back.

Now, one of the great things I have on top of a having a great bunch of friends- is a great bunch of doctor friends. Throughout University I lived with 4 Medics and whilst the talk around the dinner table could often get into areas not suitable for tea, it is definitely a plus when you are genuinely sick. So this afternoon I phoned my mate and told him everything. I had started worrying that it could be appendicitis, but he also thought it was more likely to be kidney stones which I think I passed earlier this morning. Here’s hoping- I definitely don’t want them to come back.

But here’s the interesting point. I did a bit of googling about Kidney stones earlier and they give some examples of food that can form calcium oxalate stones. And what was on the list- Sweet potatoes. Which I have been eating regularly for the past 3 weeks. So unfortunately I think I’m going to have to give that up. There’s always a downside to everything.