I earned myself a trip to labor and delivery today. Very exciting times. On the way to work, I was driving along (all by myself, unusually enough, because I was supposed to leave work 25 minutes early for a dr's appointment) and poof I felt the tell tale back flank beginning pains of a kidney stone. I have experienced the pain twice before in my life. Once, I was at school and had no idea what it was so I stayed at school for lots of hours at which point it eventually became unbearable and I wound up going to the ER. With all the medical stuff I've gone through, that was by far the most painful thing I've experienced. I actually told the nurse "I need to call anyone I ever said I was having '10' pain for and apologize because I knew nothing!" I also remember telling her "Now I know why people become drug addicts" when she gave me the morphine. The second time I had a stone, I knew right away so I went to the ER and said it was starting and I wanted the meds before it got bad. I'm pretty sure "DRUG SEEKER" was stamped all over my chart that day because I came before it got bad so I was still coherent, standing, and able to answer questions unlike the first time. But a CT scan confirmed it and they managed my pain.
Knowing there's a 36 week 6 day baby inside of me, I figured there would be no CT scan or xray or heavy drugs to manage the pain, and while I was 99% sure it was kidney pain, several people at school asked if I was sure it wasn't labor. So I called the on call guy and asked how I tell the difference. He was confused because I was coherent and speaking in complete sentences so I explained that I thought the pain had just started, and I recognized it as kidney pain - that I wasn't in the 'kill me now' stage yet. He told me to go to L&D to get checked out.
A nurse met me and hooked me up in triage and I hung out for an hour and a half or so while I waited for Mike to arrive. (Poor guy, when I called the office got all deflated because his surprise baby shower was supposed to be today!) About a half hour after that the doc showed up after finishing someone's C-section. They told me that I was having lots of contractions (news to me, I thought it was just the baby moving) but that the pattern of contractions was consistent with bladder/kidney irritation. (Who knew those things could be related?)
They did an internal exam to make sure the contractions weren't doing anything. The first exam he did blind, and he said "well, you're either having this baby right now, or that polyp got huge." So then he did a second one to see what was going on. To the best of their knowledge, the contractions are not doing anything. However, the previously large polyp has now reached "gigantic" and "Hey nurse come check this out because you won't see it again" proportions and is blocking some access to telling exactly what is going on there.
FYI if a doctor ever precedes something with the sentence "You should think of a happy place right now" - what he's about to do isn't gonna be very nice. :)
So they sent me home. They can't 100% diagnose a stone without an xray but told me to just super hydrate and hope for the best. Yay!? ;)
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