A Stone in My Heart
I could just cry. I went to see a urologist today, after feeling suspicious pangs in my left side.
I had a kidney stone a few years ago. I didn’t know what I had until I went to the emergency room, doubled over with pain, as though someone had taken a broom handle and sssswhacked! me as hard as possible on the left side, right in the soft space between ribcage and pelvis. The emergency room staff knew immediately what it was, before running tests for safety’s sake, and I learned that day exactly where my left kidney is.
The pain was memorable, intensely memorable. After the fact, I was able to recognize what had seemed to be gas pains in the same area, or kinks from sleeping on a saggy mattress, as warning signs.
Now I have similar pains in the same spot, and I’m just miserable knowing I’ll have to go through it all again: drinking until I’m ready to puke, pissing it all out again in an attempt to pass the stone, a month with a thread dangling out of my privates, attached to a stent in my urethra. And it all hurts. Sometimes it hurts a lot, sometimes just a little. Sometimes something shifts slightly inside, and hurts like hell without any warning.
But worse than knowing that I’m about to go through it again is the suspicion that I’ll go through it again and again as I age. The urologist warned me that about 50% of kidney stone patients have another in their lifetime. I vowed right then that I would be in the other 50%. And I’ve been so good about the doctor’s instructions. My stone was calcium oxalate, which could result from too much calcium, too much oxalate (a product of digesting caffeine), or too little water. I was told not to reduce my calcium intake, so I didn’t. I drank caffeine regularly, but not in large quantities, before the stone; afterwards, I cut even my meager intake by half. I followed the doctor’s instructions of finding where my tolerance level is for drinking excess water, and I’ve drunk that much every day for four years, right on the edge of feeling ill. Every day. So it’s looking like the kidney stones are largely out of my control. And if they’re out of my control, I’ll get another one. It's like warming up for the constant pain that some people describe as being part of old age.
Fear isn’t quite the word for it. Dread works. I am filled with dread at the thought. A stone in the heart is nothing by comparison.