Today I felt pain like I've never felt pain before.If you read backwards through this blog to just one week ago you'll know that I paid my first visit to our doctor for 13 years - because I was feeling the need to urinate far to often during the day.
She took a urine test and a blood sample and whilst a quick test showed no urinary infection she sent them off for analysis, and for a PSA test for prostate cancer, which was just one of many probable causes.
I had an appointment to revisit the surgery at 4.15pm this afternoon to get the results and in the last two days the feeling of a need to urinate was with me constantly, not that I needed to, it was just the feeling of needing to - its a bloody nuisance.
I woke at 5am this morning, went to the bathroom and took a leak, no problem there. Went back to bed and awoke at 6am with the constant feeling of a need to urinate strangely absent.
I found out why when I stood up.
In that hour someone had crept up to me while I was asleep and inserted twenty seven dozen red hot needles into the small of my back, left hand side. I had never felt pain like that at all, never.
The problem is that I have nothing to compare the pain to, I'm fifty years old in two weeks time and have never broken a bone in my body, I bruised a toe badly once when I kicked a brick on the beach at Whitley Bay (long story), but thats about as bad as pain has ever been for me - actually thats not true, I crushed a vertebrae disc in my back fifteen years ago, but that was just a bee sting compared to this morning.
For some reason I came downstairs, decided that was a stupid thing to do so went back upstairs and lay on the bed where Suzanne soon awoke to find me soaked in sweat and clutching the sheets in screaming agony, she gave me two paracetomols which were as useless as slapping me in the face and telling me to pull myself together and called the doctor.
After a long discussion with the emergency NHS Direct person it was decided to bypass my GP and head for the hospital and so an ambulance was called, but as my agony was not life threatening (all this from just a telephone conversation, clever aren't they ?) I wasn't a priority.
To cut the story short I arrived at the hospital at 9am after three hours of pain and promptly threw up in the ambulance as predicted by the paramedic who had given me the gas-and-air tube so loved by birthing females with a warning that it would make me feel intoxicated and possibly billious, it did both, but it didn't kill the pain at all - all I can say is that if the gas-and-air stuff dulls the pain of childbirth then childbirth pain can't be that bad, not as bad as what I had anyway.
There, thats got rid of all the indignant women, now read on guys...
After blood had been taken the nurse noticed my writhing on the bed and groaning in agony and asked if I'd like a painkiller - I almost strangled her for asking the most stupid question of the year.
One tiny little white tablet, just 30mg of codeine and a 200mg tablet of ibuprofen and the pain went within three minutes, I told Suzanne to write down the name of those two drugs and find a source for them on eBay, with a packet of them a person could go through the rest of their life and never have a hangover again, ever.
Kidney stones, thats what I apparently have folks, kidney stones.
Tiny little crystals of salt and calcium, tiny little things that in my case don't even show up on an x-ray (I had two), tiny little grains that sit there pressing on a nerve making you want to constantly urinate and then one morning they decide to move along a little bit and BAM - you're incapacitated with blinding agony, writhing, screaming, clenching, pain that cannot be merely described - and two little tablets make it go away.
I've got a three day supply of those little tablets and I'm hanging on to them like grim death. The pain hasn't come back yet and its now 7.30pm, they fed me and released me to come home at 2pm this afternoon - I love the NHS, its a superb service no matter what shit the politicians spout about it.
How do I feel now ?
Full of water for starters, I've got to drink between four and six pints a day now to wash the buggering stones out - and I've been warned that that could be fun too - but mainly I feel bruised...
If you've ever watched the old John Wayne movie "Stagecoach" where he's on a stagecoach being persued by Indians and he climbs over the six horses heads for some reason that I can't remember, then hangs underneath the horses and slides all the way back down underneath the stagecoach, no I can't remember why he had to do that bit either, but you remember the scene ?
Well I feel like I've just done the same stunt.
But when I did it I fell over the lead horses head and it trampled all over me and so did its five other horsey friends. Then the stagecoach ran over me too, and just for good measure all of the persuing Indians horses squished me into the sand as well.
Thats how I feel right now.
But I've got my tablet friends to keep me company tonight.
