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.
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