Dear (stone) God Almighty!!!
As a young adult since entering college, I have become one of those people easily fascinated by the facts of life (everything, not just the birds and the bees, mind you). Somehow I've turned into someone who likes to know as much as possible about everything. How do car engines work? How does the third rail provide electrical energy to the subway? And those standard run of the mill for high school text book explanations don't cut it for me. I want intimate details, damn it!
Like for example, I was told once that cough medicine basically stops you from coughing. But I wanted to know more, so I pressed Dr. Patel. He finally explained that it has a specific chemical that makes your body stop coughing. And yet I demanded more, to which I finally got satisfied: It has specially formulated narcotics, especially in prescription cough medicine, that shuts down a part of your brain so it doesn't react to trickles or mild sensations in your lungs, which in turn stops you from coughing. It was so not what I was expecting, but it totally satiated my thirst for knowledge.
While in high school, I knew a girl named Nadia. She always told me whenever her dad was having kidney stones. And then there was Kristi, a friend in Iowa. She has chronic kidney stones since a child. But when she told me about her condition during an episode about a year and a half ago, somehow it didn't prompt me to read up on it.
Till today.
You see, I have this habit of mine that I enjoy reading This Fish's blog right before hitting the sack every night. And she recently blogged about getting stoned. And of course, curiosity got the better of me. I knew it was already inching close to midnight, yet my fingers somehow led me to WebMD, my TOTALLY favorite reference site for all things medical.
While reading a topic overview of Kidney Stones article, this statement struck me as odd: "When a stone travels through a ureter {the tubes that connect your kidneys to the bladder}, it may cause no pain. Or it may cause great pain and other symptoms." Uh, what the hell? That's like saying, when you get punched by Mike Tyson, it either hurts or it doesn't. What kind of a medical statement is that?
And then a little bit later, I looked at some pictures. Dear God almighty!!! There was a picture of an actual kidney stone! It did not look like a stone at all; rather, it had multiple sharp edges, about one-eight of an inch long! And a subsequent picture demonstrated how a kidney stone is stuck in the ureter! Holy... Shit... Of all shits!!!
Then the next article I read, Kidney Stones in Adults was both interesting and pain-inducing. Basically, after a kidney stone has developed and entered the ureter from the kidney, blood may be present in your urine as it scrapes!!! along the walls of the urinary tract! Furthermore, this just prompts your muscles along the tract to micro spasm to push it along!
Jesus Christ! If it hurts to go through the ureter, I'd hate to see how painful it is to have a kidney stone {more like a jagged shard of crystal} pass through the urethra as it is being emptied from the bladder!
And the fact that did me in? Sometimes the doctor might ask you to "catch (the kidney stone) in a cup or tea strainer" for testing! Wha wha what?!? Not only was it mind boggling to ask someone peeing in excruciating pain while holding a tea strainer steadily so you don't miss the stone, but it totally made me realize that the next time I go visit my friend Kristi in Iowa, I'll be sure to politely turn down her any cup of tea! Lest it be instant tea in a tea bag.
Like for example, I was told once that cough medicine basically stops you from coughing. But I wanted to know more, so I pressed Dr. Patel. He finally explained that it has a specific chemical that makes your body stop coughing. And yet I demanded more, to which I finally got satisfied: It has specially formulated narcotics, especially in prescription cough medicine, that shuts down a part of your brain so it doesn't react to trickles or mild sensations in your lungs, which in turn stops you from coughing. It was so not what I was expecting, but it totally satiated my thirst for knowledge.
While in high school, I knew a girl named Nadia. She always told me whenever her dad was having kidney stones. And then there was Kristi, a friend in Iowa. She has chronic kidney stones since a child. But when she told me about her condition during an episode about a year and a half ago, somehow it didn't prompt me to read up on it.
Till today.
You see, I have this habit of mine that I enjoy reading This Fish's blog right before hitting the sack every night. And she recently blogged about getting stoned. And of course, curiosity got the better of me. I knew it was already inching close to midnight, yet my fingers somehow led me to WebMD, my TOTALLY favorite reference site for all things medical.
While reading a topic overview of Kidney Stones article, this statement struck me as odd: "When a stone travels through a ureter {the tubes that connect your kidneys to the bladder}, it may cause no pain. Or it may cause great pain and other symptoms." Uh, what the hell? That's like saying, when you get punched by Mike Tyson, it either hurts or it doesn't. What kind of a medical statement is that?
And then a little bit later, I looked at some pictures. Dear God almighty!!! There was a picture of an actual kidney stone! It did not look like a stone at all; rather, it had multiple sharp edges, about one-eight of an inch long! And a subsequent picture demonstrated how a kidney stone is stuck in the ureter! Holy... Shit... Of all shits!!!
Then the next article I read, Kidney Stones in Adults was both interesting and pain-inducing. Basically, after a kidney stone has developed and entered the ureter from the kidney, blood may be present in your urine as it scrapes!!! along the walls of the urinary tract! Furthermore, this just prompts your muscles along the tract to micro spasm to push it along!
Jesus Christ! If it hurts to go through the ureter, I'd hate to see how painful it is to have a kidney stone {more like a jagged shard of crystal} pass through the urethra as it is being emptied from the bladder!
And the fact that did me in? Sometimes the doctor might ask you to "catch (the kidney stone) in a cup or tea strainer" for testing! Wha wha what?!? Not only was it mind boggling to ask someone peeing in excruciating pain while holding a tea strainer steadily so you don't miss the stone, but it totally made me realize that the next time I go visit my friend Kristi in Iowa, I'll be sure to politely turn down her any cup of tea! Lest it be instant tea in a tea bag.
posted by StHalcyon at
00:02
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home