Commentary By Adam Smith

The North Jefferson News



I’ve always been a stones fan.

Rocks also serve a valuable purpose to provide fortification for buildings and prevent water run-off and such.

What I’m not a big fan of, however, are stones in my kidneys. (I bet you were wondering where I was going with this. I was starting to wonder myself.)

Last Tuesday, the day started normally. My alarm clock, which sounds like a cross between an air raid siren and a nuclear reactor, went off at the normal time.

As many folks do, I ventured to the restroom for the morning’s evacuation when I noticed something didn’t look right. Too much salty food, I figured.

I then went about the business of the morning exercise, during which my back and abdomen started throbbing. It felt somewhat akin to a New Orleans kidney robber cutting my back open and taking my kidney while I proceeded to walk. When I was done exercising, it felt like both kidneys had been taken.

It was then I started to think “kidney stone.” Things in the restroom weren’t going any more smashingly, so I called Dr. Mom and then my actual doctor, Dr. Imreallytoobusyforyou.

My doctor suggested I go to the emergency room, which I did after much hemming and hawing. I knew it would be a wait, but my luck with UAB’s emergency room had been good in the past, so I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 minutes. Wishful thinking, I know.

I was called up twice and interrogated about my problem and was even issued one of those stylish orange hospital bracelets, which clashed with what I was wearing. After each trip up, I was instructed to go back out and wait. So I waited. Then I waited some more. And some more. And then a little more.

After waiting for what felt like an eternity, my severe back pain had ceased so I decided to remove my stylish orange bracelet and take it back to the hacienda. I was also convinced that the ER staff probably just thought I was there for morphine, oxycontin or one of those other heavy duty drugs they give people with cancer or kidney stones.

The next day, I went back to Kirklin Clinic where I had 47 vials of blood drawn, urinated in a cup (a process that involved some truly ridiculous instructions hanging on the bathroom wall) and then had a CT scan.

The nurse gave me a saline IV and I asked her if I should be tasting alcohol. She told me it was saline, to which I replied, “I was hoping it was vodka.”

My imitation doctor called me that evening and let me know I did, in fact, have a kidney stone. His solution? “Drink lots of water.”

Is this what the medical field has come to? Isn’t that a rather obvious solution? Almost a week later and after having drank somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 gallons of water, I’m still not sure if the dang thing’s still in my kidney or not. I’ve had kidney stones before and I’ve always been pretty sure of the moment in which they passed out of my body, and I don’t think that moment has arrived.

My next move will be to jump on a trampoline, jump rope and stand on a Christmas tree shaker in hopes that the stone will be jarred from my body. It may also teach my kidneys a thing or two about what kind of riff-raff they consort with.