Archive for September 2003
(insert Austin Powers 3 reference here.)
September 18, 2003, 12:25 pmBing just had something surgically removed from his brain-cockpit and wrote about it at length.
While illumnating, it is, I’ll admit, a little disturbing. I was in the middle of eating a banana and now I feel funny about bananas. I could just be the weather though.
It did however remind me that I was at one point considering writing about my experience with kidney stones, but decided not to. And now after all this time, I’ve forgotten most of the important medical facts, but I do have a few gems to share. As a show of support for my man Bing, here we go;
1) If you’ve been drinking less than the daily amount of water recommended, start. If you’ve been drinking more than the daily amount of Coke (oh, like, say, you work at a video game company and work crazy hours for months), be warned, flushing your system, while a good thing in the long-term could reveal some sort term problems - like a kidney stone.
kidney stone n. A small, hard mass in the kidney that forms from deposits chiefly of phosphates and urates.
Note: Phosphates. Like in Coke.
2) Three symptoms to watch out for;
Pain in side - this is the kidney sending out its warning.
Pain in groin - this is the distress setting off warnings in a number of systems “down there.”
Nausea - this is your body, lacking any possible response to a this-to-shall-pass situation, acting up to make it clear something is wrong.
3) When you go to the emergency room, and you will, don’t ask for painkillers, though you will desperately want them. City ERs will assume anyone asking for painkillers is looking for a fix and instead give you asprin. POssibly baby-asprin. I found this out afterwards from the doctor, so thank heavens for my protestant (an ironic misnomer in this situation) upbringing.
4) Morphine is awesome, and hence it’s obvious why it’s an addictive substance.
5) Passing a kidney stone can take hours or even days, during which all you’ve got is your natural constitution, pain-threshhold, and a prescription for Tylenol 3. Mine passed in less than three hours, which meant I said thanks to the doctor and took my leave who was, I’m sure, convinced he’d been duped by a junkie.
6) When I say “passed” I mean as in got through whatever tiny little opening it was stuck in, hence the pain. Making the rest of the “trip” can take a few trips to the bathroom. Now, the doctor (my own doctor, not the ER one) will want to see the stone and have it sent to a lab, so at the ER they give you this paper funnel with mesh in order to catch the men’s room acrobat in the safety net.
You might notice the problem here. Carrying the funnel around is fine, you can fold it up and keep it in your pocket. However, if your first trip is a negative arrival, what have you got? A soaked (to put it mildly) paper funnel. Maybe smarter doctors will advise solutions, but I was on my own, so fortunately spotting the problem in advance I hit upon this idea;
Mason jars. I won’t go into details. I’m surprised enough that I’m going over this with you as it is, but mason jars are cheap and plentiful, you can keep one, relatively clean at your common port-o-calls, and should the guest of honor appear, THEN you can pull out the paper funnel.
This would work just as well with those disposable fast-food cups I’d imagine and as a bonus can usually be found in places where you won’t have a jar around - like at the movies or whatever.
It’s icky and biological, I know, but there you have it. My two-cents on my biggest medical incident to date.
My advice is never find yourself in this situation if you can avoid it - drink lots of water.
—castewar | Comments Off
(posted in the General category)
Starburst Theme designed by Claire
powered by WordPress 2.5.1 | valid XHTML and CSS
