Life is Like a Kidney Stone

My first bout with kidney issues was when I was 7 years old. I don’t remember much but I do know I spent seven days in the hospital. The greatest memory were the get well cards my classmates sent to cheer me up. They were delivered by a little girl named Roisin Murphy who came with her Mom and brought along some homework from the teacher. I always loved her name and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that her name was as Irish as they come. I was in my teens the next time the horrible pain made its way into my life. That episode is much clearer in my memories and I think it was the first time in my life I thought I was going to die. Let me rephrase that. The first time I thought death would be preferable to the pain. We had a Doctor who made house calls and no matter what you had, inevitably he would let you know that he had a patient who had died from whatever it was you suffered from. Old Doc Giffen was a man of medicine and prescribed lots of water and cranberry juice. Here we are 56 years later and I always have a bottle of cranberry pills in my cabinet.

To be honest, I never really saw many of the stones I passed through the years as most were quite small. I did feel the instant relief though as my body got rid of these horrible irritants. Throughout the years I have seen many specialists and endured lots of tests, surgeries and procedures. Apparently I have something called Medullary Sponge kidney. A congenital defect that causes the formation of cysts in my kidneys. And small amounts of solids that pass through my kidneys can get trapped by the cysts and over time more solids join and stones are formed. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of times I have headed to emergency so they could hook me up to an IV line and pump me full of pain medication. It usually comes on fast and although I have a high pain tolerance, there are times I truly feel I won’t be able to bear it. I have passed so many stones that I can tell where they are just from the type of pain or location. Pregnancy is usually the worst for some reason and baby three helped my left kidney rupture.

A few days ago I felt the old familiar flank pain. Both kidneys have hundreds of cobweb stone formations and once in awhile something breaks loose and starts to move. Often the discomfort is due to the kidney spasming as it tries to get rid of the foreign object. Usually it only hurts when the stone is on the move. And so it was, another day when I just felt icky. I knew it was coming but it wasn’t debilitating and so I went to the gym with my daughter. Lots of water as we work out is the best. The pain was just a medium throb. After I went home, I had a hot shower to help my backache and I popped a bunch of cranberry pills. The night was a bit tough but not enough to take any pain meds. Early this morning I felt the familiar bladder burn and knew the stone was almost out. And suddenly there they were. Two little specs. Hardly bigger than grains of sand. And somehow I felt so humbled that something so incredibly tiny could cause so much pain and anxiety. Frankly I couldn’t help but think to myself that my life had always been a little bit like this in my younger years. How many times did I allow something small and seemingly insignificant, escalate to crisis proportions?

Life is unpredictable in so many ways and most people just prefer when things go smoothly. When we are kids we go along. As teens, we push the envelope. See how far we can go until trouble smacks us in the face. As young adults, in our twenties, we are excited about our newfound freedom. We move into a place of our own and we get to decide where and when we do what with whom. But that is when we start to see there are consequences to our actions. Party too late and miss class. Or feel like crap at work. Repeat those actions too often and you risk failing. Or being fired. We don’t pay our bills our utilities get shut off. Get kicked out of our apartments. No money for car insurance, well I guess you walk or get a bus pass. For the most part those lean times are hard but we don’t care much about the future. We aren’t sure what the future holds but we assume it will work out. Everything will be okay. There is a blind belief that life will be good. No matter what our families or friends are up to we know we will be ok. There are minor irritations but for the most part we hope they will pass.

But these are also the years we are out of our little circles. Meeting other people in the world. Our number of acquaintances grows as we socialize and network. That’s when we see so much difference in people. Their ideas, views and opinions were all fed to them in their early lives and are such a huge part of who they think they are. Just like me. And you. Sometimes we meet people who are so far removed from our own travels that we are either fascinated or bothered by them. My own University and college years showed me such a diversion from my own young life. I was small town. Rural. Not a lot of diversity in those surroundings. I would eventually interact with people whose life experiences were so far removed from my own. Some of these people were fascinating. Others were just too far removed. These are the ones that I allowed to get under my skin. Just like the kidney stone. I was irritated.

Becoming a city girl threw things at me as well. I was pregnant with my third child the first time I ever ventured into a Walmart. The Woolco stores had all shut down and a Walmart had taken over the space at the end of a Mall. I had my cart and was in line to pay when a cashier opened up a new till. She waved me over and so I went around the people in front of me who were paying. As such I was on the wrong side but she started scanning my things from the cart and placing in the bagging area on the other side. She asked me to pull my cart around. In the meantime her light was switched on and people were lining up. The first people in line were upset when I tried to bring the cart around. I tried to explain I had accidentally gone to the wrong side but then they just verbally attacked my intelligence. The cashier tried to de-escalate the situation but she was an older lady and a little intimidated herself. The man started to hit his cart into me so I moved in front of my cart. He continued to hit my cart all the while calling me names and hurling abuse in a loud voice. The cashier kept apologizing but I was seriously afraid. So once I paid I rushed out. When I got home, my hubby was just about to leave for his baseball game. I collapsed against him and sobbed as the whole story came out. He was surprised as I am a pretty confident person who normally would have stepped up and shouted right back. But, I was 29, very pregnant with a high risk pregnancy, and not feeling capable. We talked, I felt better, he left for his game and I never went to Walmart for over twenty years. I do admit a bias though based on that experience. When someone mentions shopping at Walmart I get a bad taste in my mouth. I have become a snob. Against Walmart. Weird right? Because I shop at Value Village and thrift shops almost exclusively so why am I so elitist about Walmart. Because one person 34 years ago showed me a face I didn’t want to associate with and that became the face of Walmart for me.

I have always had the habit of walking away from people. Sometimes in a big grandiose performance but usually I just stop reaching out. As I age I find it more and more difficult to reach out to people. But it isn’t because of issues or anger. Mainly I just like to be alone. I love to do so many things and its hard to make plans for me. So I just go alone because I am an impromptu person. Now some of my dreams are large so it is unreasonable to expect another person to drop everything to head somewhere for a month with me. I know people who do large group trips and that was something my hubby and I did on motorbikes for years. But it is hard for me. Lots of people means following schedules and itineraries and I am not in control of my body and time. My hubby was a conformist. Always a rule follower. Group trips caused us to have issues because everyone was staying somewhere or eating somewhere that was out of my realm. All those wealthy oil guys on bike trips, loved to stay in truly dumpy places. Why? Because they are guys. And I can’t tell you how many steak joints I’ve been to across the United States. I am not a steak person. One trip we were minutes from old faithful and didn’t see it. We had a deadline. And Sturgess? The Mecca of bike rally’s? Kind of a dump. But, these trips usually had thirty guys and five or six women. Only two of us women rode our own bikes. I don’t really understand why my hubby wanted me to go. But the trips weren’t that fun for me. So now, that I am alone, I love the solitary rides. Just me and my bike. Because the small irritants are trapped in my brain. Not bothering me but keeping me from going down a path I know I won’t enjoy. And yet last year I took a bike trip with a gal from my past. It was great. we started out together, then spent a few days doing our own thing, then met up again. I learned from the past and it made for a great experience.

I have the words “Let It Go” tattooed on my left wrist. I needed the words to remind me that small irritations caused me more issues than could be seen from an external view. Holding grudges and anger toward other people places or things only harms us. Because anxiety and stress cause illness. Ultimately it can kill us if we let things fester until diseases take hold of our physical bodies. So sometimes, I think I should go outside of my comfort zone and do things I normally wouldn’t do. Even though I might get irritated in some ways. Maybe the irritation can help me to heal or learn or grow as a person. Perhaps I will be able to move on from things easier. I will learn coping skills that will serve me better in the future. I recently attended an event where I knew I would be very anxious. And I was. But was it the situation or the memories of the past? Did I walk away feeling better, worse or indifferent to the past? Did my hurt heal? Did I let it go? Or did that little irritant get a little bigger? Here is what I learned from that event. I let the past control me that day. Not only that, it truly ruined a few weeks leading up to that day. But I did spend time after the fact thinking about my reactions. From years ago and from that day. It isn’t all worked out because we all like to hold onto righteous indignation. But in the end I know it was good to be exposed to past hurts. To understand there are things I need to do everyday to fix my reactions. Like the kidney stones, life’s irritants keep us in line. The stones are there to remind me to drink lots of water every day. Be careful with what I eat. Read about my disease. Be informed. Live better physically. But when things are going great, and I forget and I eat that salty food. Or get dehydrated too often. I get complacent about my health. And then my body sends a nasty little spec of calcium to remind me. Do better is the message. When life’s little specs get us down we need to do better. We need to learn from the irritating things in life. And then? Well, we need to let it go.