Who can find comfort in a nurse telling you that childbirth won’t be as painful as the writhing agony of the present? While my husband tried to explain my medical history of kidney stones and pregnancy to the on-call doctor, I squirmed and rocked on the gurney, attempting to convince myself that it wasn’t all that bad. The tension and aching in my lower left flank would not let me believe anything but pain at the moment. Nausea had already consumed me and there was nothing left to give the wide pink bucket on the counter. My head was going to explode on top of everything else. Finally, relief came with a male nurse and a fabulous narcotic called Dilaudid, a morphine relative.
Laying in the ER with the Food Network displaying a delicious recipe for acorn squash, my husband, Jesse, and I watched the minutes tick by. This was my third visit to an emergency department with the onset of kidney stone pain; first pregnancy though. The last two times had been five years ago or more. I wracked my brain, and Jesse’s, for possible causes of my stones. Each episode (including some minor at-home occurrences), had never once produced a visible sample I could take to a lab for analysis. My stones have always dissolved before passage. On the other hand, I’d always been able to take a muscle relaxant for medication to ease the process. Twenty-four weeks pregnant meant no such drug and that also eliminated most procedures, including a CT scan that might locate the stones in the first place. All we could do was inject me with a narcotic for pain and try an ultrasound to see the little clusters that caused so much trouble.
The narcotic worked for a couple hours at a time, but the ultrasound showed nothing in my kidneys. The technician was nice enough to make a quick peek at the baby. She was as healthy as ever and seemingly unbothered by all the goings on with her mother. Many hours later, maybe about seven, they wanted to discharge me with a script and a follow-up appointment with a urologist. From past experience, kidney stone episodes had never lasted more than a couple days with some residual pain up to a week later. We left with little concern and I called in to work for the rest of the week. Two days later, it was like a freight train I never saw coming as the all-inclusive vacation-of-a-lifetime for stones hit my system like a New Year’s crowd in Rockefeller Center.
Back to the ER and back on an IV with more Dilaudid and little to no submission of the pain this time. I was in agony, tears, delusional at some points. Why isn’t this over yet?! They couldn’t see the stones or give me any effective medication to help them pass. All I got was narcotics and a worrisome cluster of my parents and Jesse standing around my bed. At some point, I had been transferred up to the prenatal floor. I remember getting a little sleep and moving to another room. I remember the pain getting so bad I was crying and rolling around and I couldn’t focus on who was there or what someone was asking me. I remember the obstetrician from that hospital coming in and telling me I was taking too much Dilaudid. I was taking too much? This was the guy signing off on the medication. It wasn’t like I had an all-you-can-eat tray of narcotics in front of me! Then he threatened that I’d stop breathing soon and started lecturing me about just dealing with the pain; that he’d had kidney stones too. I was too drop-mouthed to ask him if he’d been limited due to pregnancy at the time as well, but my husband intervened. Let’s just say I was quickly transferred to Beth Israel Deaconess where my OB practiced.
