Now Playing: Kidney Stone 2

A few hours after arriving home from Fruita I felt a pain in my back, as it intensified I sadly realized it was probably another kidney stone. I popped some pills and tried to hold out, but the pain was unbearable so we went to the hospital.

It was a busy night at the E.R. with, strangely, several other kidney stone sufferers. I had to wait around 45 minutes to be seen - kneeling over the toilet in the bathroom trying not to vomit from the nausea was a treat. Once I got into a room it still took 30 minutes or more to get what I desperately wanted - pain killers. See, they have this annoying policy that a test must show there is something medically wrong with you before they can give you pain drugs because they have addicts come in faking pain so they can get a dose. Once they got the I.V. in and hit me with morphine, I was finally able to stop shaking and relax. We consulted with the doctor, and based on my last kidney stone, he send me home with some prescriptions to wait for it to pass.

I got some sleep last night and the pain meds help take the edge off. The pain has lessened some today. Now it's the waiting game. I hope it doesn't take too long to pass - the first one came out before I left the hospital.

Obviously I'm profoundly grateful this stone didn't drop while I was riding in Fruita, or on the drive home. Although my urinations have been less volume and more frequent the last four days so maybe it was blocking the ureter (tube between the kidney and bladder) but didn't get painful until yesterday. Regardless, the timing could have been much worse.

I'd really like to know why the ureter has so many pain sensor - kidney stones are excruciating.

I'm a bit loopy from the drugs so I hope this post is coherent. I'm going back to bed.

Update: Andy has some Fruita pictures on his blog.

Evening Update: It seems the kidney stone passed today. The pain is almost gone and I feel much better, but I haven't seen the stone in the pee filter yet so there's still some doubt.