Kid(ney) Rock

So, Tuesday night, as I was working to get the girls in bed (so I could hang with Josh McKinney who had casually dropped by from Austin), I started to get this sharp pain in my abdomen. Me no likey, but I thought it would go away soon enough. Well, it didn't, so we left Josh with the girls and went to the ER. I ended up getting sick of waiting, but the next day I succeeded in finding a stand-alone ER where I got a CT scan. The doc came out after taking a look at that and said, "You have one of the largest kidney stones I have ever seen". So, I made an emergency appointment with a urologist and procured the following x-ray:




If you look just left of center, you can see the stone--that white spot left of the darker area.

The urologist informed me that I actually had an 11 millimeter (1/2 inch for non-metric users) stone trying to make its way into my life. As that is much larger than you want to pass, I was scheduled for a procedure wherein they shock you in hopes of breaking up the stone. You still have to pass the remaining fragments, but at least they are smaller.

So, the night before the procedure, I asked my brother and the EQP for a blessing. The next day, as they were doing a final x-ray to determine the exact location of the monster before putting me under, the doctor and x-ray tech looked up and said, "It's gone".

They said I must have passed it, but I never felt anything remotely like that and really hadn't felt very much pain since getting the x-ray. So, this blessing is right near the top of my blessing list, sandwiched between having my beautiful children and getting the GI Joe Aircraft Carrier for Christmas in 1986, in no certain order.

Thanks for those who knew about this and offered prayers in my behalf. Drink lots of water and take care of yourselves.