Albuquerque, Spokane and Kidney Stones

I traveled with the Women's basketball team for the first and second round games to Albuquerque. Wonderful city. Good food. Nice people. Nice Weather. It also didn't hurt that the women upset Baylor in the second round, meaning the next weekend I was out in Spokane for the Sweet 16. We didn't do so well out there against Stanford (who is currently in the women's final 4) and it decided to snow in Spokane while we were there, but it was an alright town.

Of course I had the routine POTS flareups at the airport. When you're weighed down like a pack mule, it happens. That's what the cane is there for. I tried when we were coming back from Albuquerque to not use the cane at all, but that failed about halfway through security. With all this traveling and early morning wakeup times and lack of sleep, POTS flareups were inevitable.

I came back to Pittsburgh for good (I was in town for 2 days between Albuquerque and Spokane) a week ago. All these trips and lack of foresight on my part has delayed my work on my massive end-of-semester papers, but I've figured out that as long as I write 2-3 pages on SOMETHING everyday, then I'll be fine and hopefully not pulling any all-nighters, which I despise.

So I'm in class on Tuesday when I feel a dull ache in my back. I thought it was the way I was sitting so I shift. When squirming didn't work I excused myself and walked around the building for a minute. When that didn't work, and the pain was getting so bad that I was actually wimpering in class, I called the ambulance on myself. I didn't even go to the hospital when I was hit by a CAR, just to put into perspective how badly this hurt.

Of course it took the medics a while to get there, so the campus police and first responders had to show up too. They also had to temporarily shut down traffic on 5th avenue to get me in, which I felt really bad about. By the time I got to the hospital I was screaming and crying. Of course they have to follow protocol and find a room and a nurse and take their time and blah blah blah. I was in one of those triage units with the cloth between you and next person. When they finally got a nurse, she said "I'll be with you in a minute" and disappears. I'm screaming and crying so loudly at this point that other people's relatives are looking at me funny. When the nurse wouldn't come I began screaming "HELP ME!!" It wasn't long after that that someone finally got on my case. When the tech came in to draw some blood and get a catheter in me, he was apologizing for hurting me. I was like "dude, that feels like kittens right now compared to the pain I'm in." The nurse gave me a muscle relaxant and a narcotic (Demerol) which was AMAZING. I went almost instantly from screaming crybaby to completely chilled out.

I had a CT scan to confirm what was suspected: kidney stones. Moving my stretcher to the CT room made me nauseous and I eventually lost my breakfast, but the narcotic was so damn good that I just didn't care.

The pain started up again so I was given some percocet. Once I sobered up a little bit from that I was taken home via campus police and given a prescription for some "just in case" narcotics, which I ended up filling and using.

The stone ultimately passed thank god. I should really set up the appointment with the urologist, but it always slips my mind. I have an appointment next week with the Internist for my POTS stuff.