i'm just kidney

got back from west texas saturday evening. sunday morning woke before 7 with a back ache. rolled on my spine aligner, which didn't help. soaked in hot water with epsom salts. didn't help. put arnica on it. didn't help. took low-dose aspirin. didn't help. massaged it. didn't help.

at first i thought i slept funny. then i thought i was having a muscle spasm from driving for 8 hours the day before.

the pain kept worsening, and i had a couple of bouts of nausea. i called the after-hours clinic at 9:30, gave symptoms, they said come in at 10:30, it's most likely a kidney stone.

drove myself there. by then i'm obviously in pain, moving very slowly. they took blood and urine to analyze, came back saying i had blood in my urine, and it was probably a kidney stone.

they said they could give me medication for the pain, but i couldn't drive on it, so i called my daughter to pick me up later. got a big shot in the butt of pain/anti-nausea medicine and felt waves of not caring about the pain wash over me... detailed images like dream scenes. they brought me a blanket and turned out the lights while they waited for the blood test... which finally came back normal.

the doc wrote me a prescription for vicodin and gave me a strainer. the doctor kept telling me things to do, and i kept telling her to write it down because i wasn't lucid enough to be responsible. dear lela picked me up and took me to the pharmacy and then home at 2:30.

and then i slept, took vicodin, slept, drank water, slept, peed a couple of times, and slept more until 10:30 monday morning, when i woke up. forgot to use the strainer before then. still nauseous occasionally. felt slow, sluggish, unbalanced.

finally ate monday evening, had lost 5 pounds in 2 days. vicodin is harsh on the stomach. started lengthening time between doses.

tuesday morning i went to see my regular doctor. i felt better, still some back pain. he had another urine sample analyzed, still blood in it. went for a cat scan. they put contrast liquid into my veins and looked for blockages. doc called later, said no blockages appeared.

so, huh. either i never had a kidney stone and it was something else, or i had one and it passed when i didn't use the strainer, or i had one and it dissolved, which i kept visualizing, after googling kidney stones and seeing that they are sharp-edged crystals--not something you want in your kidney or especially going down your ureter to your bladder. cringe!

i spent some time just breathing white light into the sore place and visualizing kidney stone dissolving. i did pico-pico breathing and then did my meditation using a healing mantra, "dear all healing energies, i love you. please heal my pain. thank you." put an ice pack under back and laid on it for awhile. visualized little pacman type cells eating up whatever didn't belong to my highest health and leaving behind clean glowing tissues.

feeling finally free of pain, i worked on my fall garden tuesday afternoon, creating a 10' x 3' no-dig garden of newspaper, bone and feather meal, alfalfa hay, coastal hay, and compost, fenced with chicken wire, ready to plant this weekend. felt great to do something constructive.

back to work yesterday, wednesday, after a week off and 3 days of being under par to say the least. no longer taking vicodin. felt sluggish and cranky, came home and took aleve and slept a couple of hours, then went out with k j for mexican food at polvo's.

today i felt back to normal, finally. i got my buoyancy and resiliency back, the light at the end of the tunnel of "ordeals". yippee! now i'll just be drinking a lot of water with lemon and also cranberry juice to dissolve any other stones that may be lurking in my kidneys so as not to have to experience that kind of pain again.