Stoned

Family support in the emergency room: Mark, Jake, Sarah, and Dylan.

Please ignore the uncombed hair...

May 16, 2019

I'd been feeling some odd pressure in my abdomen for a few weeks, but then it would fade away. After three particularly persistent days, May 5-7, I wondered if I should see a doctor, but then it went away entirely. Until Thursday of last week.

It had been a typical morning, doing a couple loads of laundry and washing dishes and so on. Around 2:00 I sat at my computer to check emails and Facebook. That's when the pressure came back, stronger than ever. By 4:00, it was growing quite painful, but I'm a stubborn woman. My plan had been to jump in the shower, and no pain was going to stop me.

By the time I shut off the shower and got out, the pain was near-crippling. Still, I continued with my usual routine of applying body lotion, flossing and brushing my teeth, moisturizing my face, and choosing clothes. However, before I could get dressed, the pain brought me to my knees, literally. I doubled over, my legs buckled, and I fell across the bed. 

I managed to grab my phone and call my daughter, Sarah. It's no exaggeration to say I was sobbing and gasping with pain (the term "weeping and wailing" holds new meaning for me). I told her I needed her to drive me to the emergency room. I could hear the panic in her voice when she said she'd be right over. Then I called Eugene, the husband of my friend Wyndie as well as a member of our bishopric at church, and I asked him to come give me a blessing. They live just a few houses away, so I knew he could be here quickly if he was home from work. Thankfully, he was.

This all sounds so calm, but the truth is that I was having a hard time thinking. At first I couldn't even remember how to find the phone numbers in my cell phone. Then I didn't know who to call or what to do. In the midst of all this, my gulping sobs and cries of pain had woken Mark from his nap and he came in to see what was wrong. He wanted to help, but I could barely talk coherently and I didn't want to be touched.

Meanwhile, I struggled to put on my shirt. Part of my brain still recognized that it would be unseemly to be seen in just my underwear by my friend's husband. I got the shirt over my head, but the towel holding up my wet hair fell off on my sheets and stayed there. Combing my hair was out of the question, since I couldn't even stand by this time. I couldn't even pull on my jeans.

It wasn't long before I realized I couldn't put Sarah through this. I was becoming seriously dizzy, sometimes feeling as if I might pass out. I couldn't seem to get my breath, and I knew my blood pressure had to be dangerously high by this time. I was more concerned that I was going to give myself a stroke than I was about any possible cause of the pain. How traumatized would Sarah be if I were to become unconscious or worse while she was driving me to the hospital?

It took a minute, but I finally remembered the number to call was 911. The dispatcher's calm voice helped me focus, although I had trouble recalling my address at first. I was eventually able to correct her when she repeated my street name as Navajo Lane, which would have sent the paramedics to the middle of Lakeside, but I live on Navajo Way, which is located in the county rather than the city. She stayed on the line with me until I reported that I heard people arriving.

Sarah arrived at almost the same time as Eugene, so she helped me get my jeans on. Then all three of them supported me into the living room, where I collapsed on the couch. Eugene gave me the blessing I'd requested, finishing up as about nine paramedics came rolling into my living room. It was comforting to see the smiling face of a long-time friend, Aaron, among them.

It's funny the bits and pieces that stick in your mind in the midst of madness. I remember the paramedics calling out my oxygen level of 97 (I was pretty much hyperventilating) and blood pressure of 180 over 85. When they asked what meds I take, I knew I wouldn't be able to remember or list them, so Sarah gathered the bottles from the cupboard for them. Then the one working directly with me asked if I'd had anything to drink, so I said, "Just a little, maybe about a liter." He looked shocked and asked, "A liter of what?" I replied, "Just water." When everyone burst into laughter, I realized he'd been asking about alcohol.

Just before they took me outside, the living room clock struck six o'clock. I didn't notice it myself, through the pain, but everyone else paused to look at it in surprise. Granted, it's an attention-getter when the clock face opens up to reveal the decorative clockworks, which move in time to a piece of classical music at the top of every hour (unless the room is dark). Aaron asked Sarah about it and I do remember hearing her answer that it had been a retirement present.

The living room clock, one of the quirky things that stuck during my crisis.

My family thinks it's hilarious that I kept explaining to everyone throughout the entire experience, multiple times, that I'd been unable to comb my hair after getting out of the shower. "No one cares, Mom," they said. Nonetheless, despite the agonizing pain, I was deeply embarrassed that my wet hair was such a mess, and I didn't want people thinking I always looked like such a slob.

It took three paramedics to walk me out to the gurney, waiting at the bottom of the porch steps. I kept  doubling over and nearly pitching out of their hands. As they were guiding me onto the stretcher, the guy closest to me said, "Your hair may not be combed, but it smells nice." Everyone chuckled, and one of his colleagues joked, "Don't be weird, Danny!" I admit, I wasn't so far gone that I couldn't appreciate how extremely fit and attractive these first responders were!

In the ambulance, they asked a lot more questions. Like, "Is there any possibility you could be pregnant?" At age sixty-four? I laughed. "If I am, shoot me now," I said. Then they put an IV needle in the back of my right hand, where they had trouble finding a good vein, and they administered 15 mcg of fentanyl. I asked, "Isn't that the stuff they're smuggling into the country that's killing people?" They assured me that it was a minimal amount, just enough to take the edge off the pain. Aaron added, "No one is dying here today." We discovered at the hospital that there was a kink in the IV, so I probably got little or no effect from the drug, but knowing I was in capable hands certainly helped me calm down.

All the medical professionals I saw that night, from the paramedics to the emergency room doctor, kept asking if I was having back pain. I knew they were trying to ascertain whether I was having kidney stones, but I really had no pain in my back at all. I don't know why. I've lived with back pain from scoliosis for nearly fifty years, so maybe it felt like business as usual. Or maybe the pain in my abdomen simply overwhelmed every other feeling. Given the lack of back pain, the doctor was leaning toward a diagnosis of bowel blockage or perforation, which would have been far more serious, but thankfully a CT scan showed the true culprit.

I'd always heard that kidney stones are the only way a man can experience pain that approaches the intensity of labor pains leading to childbirth. I used to doubt it, but now I'm a believer! When the paramedics asked me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, it was easily a ten. I told them the closest thing to it I'd ever experienced was the brief labor I had with my daughter. All three of my kids were delivered by cesarean-section, but we started out attempting a natural delivery for Sarah, until it became an emergency c-section to save her life. My labor lasted only half an hour before they gave me an epidural, but I still remember the horrific pain.

There are differences, of course. For one, this pain was only on my left side. Nonetheless, the term "excruciating" is not an exaggeration. My entire lower left abdomen was a deep, fiery mass of throbbing, cramping, writhing agony, with a piercing sharp pain in the center that felt like someone was slicing into me with a long, hot knife, over and over again.

The emergency room of our local hospital: walk-ins on the right

and ambulance entrance on the left, beyond the two yellow poles.

I think I zoned out for most of the ambulance ride, but I was aware when we pulled into the driveway of the ER. They quickly transferred me to room 17 (another weird thing to recall), where Sarah joined me within ten minutes of my arrival. It was about 6:30 by this time. A series of nurses came in to hook me up to the usual machines. My blood pressure had returned to acceptable levels by now. They removed the ineffectual IV from my right hand and started a new one in the crook of my right elbow, and they soon administered some oxycodone, but it barely touched the pain.

Sarah had been pretty well freaked out by the whole thing up to this point. She told her brothers later, "I've never seen Mom like that!" You'd never know it from this experience, but I have an unusually high pain tolerance. As long as I know what to expect, I can take it...although long-term pain can certainly make me grumpy. Besides, I'm not one who's given to emotional outbursts. I prefer to remain in control, especially in public. I'm accustomed to handling life's crises on my own, preferring not to "bother" others (I often hear from my friends, "Why didn't you call me?"). So, no, my children had never seen me behave like this.

Once the results of the CT scan came back a couple of hours later, I was totally horrified that I'd actually called 911 over something so simple as a kidney stone! How embarrassing. However, the doctor and nurses assured me that I was far from the first person with kidney stones to arrive at the ER in an ambulance, and that my situation was rather more extreme than usual.

It turns out that the very first kidney stone of my life was stuck in the ureter just below the left kidney, and had probably been there for days, if not weeks. The ureters, narrow tubes that carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder, are only about 3-4 mm wide, whereas my spiky little stone was 6.4 mm across. It wasn't going anywhere. But it kept trying to move, which was the cause of my pain.

Sarah stayed by me the entire night. As the whole episode had unfolded, it hadn't occurred to either of us to contact anyone else. I think a part of my brain figured I'd call other family members once we'd discovered what was wrong. As it turned out, I didn't have to call anyone, and I soon found myself engulfed in the support of my entire loving family.

After I'd left home in the ambulance, Sarah had headed over to meet me at the ER, leaving Mark by himself. So he'd called Dylan to ask him to bring over a pizza for dinner. Jake picked up Dylan's phone and heard, "Mary's in the hospital, so can you..." What??? Once Jake got the gist of what had happened, he told Dylan to get his shoes on because they were heading to the hospital. What???

They'd picked up Mark and a pizza, eaten a few slices in the car on their way to the hospital, and the next thing I knew, Dylan, Jake, and Mark were walking into my room. They spent well over two hours with us. By then, my pain had diminished somewhat, so there was much teasing and hilarity in ER room 17. We had to keep reminding ourselves to keep our voices and laughter in check, but it passed the time and made the overall experience much more pleasant.

We even FaceTimed Jacob in Mesa to let him know what was going on. He was ready to drop everything and head up the mountain, but I assured him that I would be going home soon and was in no real danger.

It was around 10:00 when the pain finally subsided. They'd just added some Toradol to my IV (heavenly), which whisked the pain away like magic. And it stayed gone for the next two and a half days. I was finally released to go home at 11:00, with three prescriptions and firm orders to call the urologist the next morning. Sarah drove me home in her Jeep, with a stop at Walmart to grab a bite to eat, since we'd both missed dinner.

So how did this happen? No one in my immediate family has had kidney stones, at least, not that I'm aware of. I rarely drink soda and I'm not one to use a lot of salt or any sugar. I've actually been eating less protein than usual, since going more keto in my diet. However, I'm not very fond of plain water, so it's a struggle to drink as much water each day as recommended. Believe me, after this experience, I'm working on upping my intake of H2O these days!

The story doesn't end here, of course. The pain is, in fact, ongoing. But more about that later...