Urology 101

It is often said that the worst pain a human can feel is the physical anguish experienced during childbirth. Ask you're Mom and she will gladly describe (in graphic detail) the day you arrived into this world. If you have not heard this tale as of yet, prepare yourself to be horrified, remorseful and guilt-ridden.

Men ("thankfully", he sighed) will never no such torture, however, many citizens of the Roanoke area have been battling a confounding menace which hits a gentleman right where he lives. Friends, I am talking about those tiny, yet terrible boulders of the bladder, kidney stones.

Unlike childbirth, one does not acquire a small living being when birthing a kidney stone. There is no bonding, no third grade photographs and no Little League with kidney stones, just a collection of sand-like particles awash in your commode. You can name your pebbles (in fact my first five were named Mick, Keith, Charlie, Bill and Ron in honor of a more famous group of stones which preceded them), yet they will never answer to that name. Too frail for proper jewelry, these joyless rocks cause nothing but pain and discomfort.

My first bout with this cursed affliction came in the mid-nineties at four in the morning. Awoken by enormous pain, I first feared that I was having a heart-attack. It was only after my cool under pressure spouse pointed out that my heart was not located in my middle-back, that I realized it was something else. Ignoring my pleas to call 9-1-1, my rabbi and the Marines, Janet calmly loaded me into the car and drove me to the ER, where my first creation "Mick" was passed with the help of intravenous fluids and a soon to be trusty friend named morphine.

Since my initial trip, I have visited the ER over twenty-five times, leaving a trail of assorted sized stones in my wake. Greeted like an old friend and valued customer, I am cheerfully welcomed by the ER staff, waved onto a gurney in record time, sedated and left to sleep.

Frequently my buzz-saw like snoring becomes excruciating for the mystery patients who lay moaning on the other side of the stall curtain. In fact, I often awaken in a completely other room, moved by a well meaning orderly seeking some peace. Once I woke up in a janitor's closet amidst the mops and floor cleaners, feeling way too good to care. My wife and son can always find me at pick-up time by following the sound.

In 2006 I encountered a strikingly lovely nurse when suffering another kidney blockage. This petite woman was young enough to be my daughter and was fresh out of nursing school. At first my male ego took precedence over the pain. Toughing it out for the first fifteen minutes I hoped that this vision of loveliness would fail to glimpse the pathetic wimp inside of me, however, in the twenty-first minute without drugs I transformed into a whining, moaning tot ready to sacrifice my nurse friend to the pharmaceutical gods in return for a fix.

While under the influence of powerful narcotics, a typical kidney stone sufferer is asked to urinate in a small funnel-like container with a screen to filter the stones. It's kind of like panning for gold, but with pee. Once the "unwanted guest" is snared in the screen, the specimen is shipped to a lab for further evaluation. Many urologists will require a kidney stone patient to collect a forty-eight hour urine sampling after passing a stone. If you are instructed to perform this task, make no travel plans for the weekend, as few people are known to welcome visitors toting a two-gallon jar of bodily fluids with them. Movie theatres and restaurants seem particularly opposed to such luggage, although carrying the container does afford one with a certain amount of privacy.

Like the old woman who lived in a shoe, I keep producing and reproducing stones on a yearly basis. I drive myself to the hospital now, allowing my family to sleep when I begin that 4am kidney run to the ER. One day soon I will start running out of names for my offspring. Names from the Flintstones, Rocky (1-5), Fraggle Rock, and the Steve McQueen classic “The Sand Peebles” are taken, as well as Sidney the Kidney and Sly and the Family Stones. Please send any suggestions for names of future stones to the email address at the bottom of this column. I will consider any and all monikers once I awaken from my morphine induced stupor.