Kidney Stone

Thursday morning turned into quite the adventure. Tom woke up at about 2:30 and was having a little pain in his abdomen. He went back to bed thinking nothing of it. Then at 3:30 he woke up again, the pain was worse, and within a few minutes the pain was becoming quite unbearable. We decided it would be best to take him to the hospital. Elise drove him there, luckily Elise's parents were visiting at the time, so we didn't have to take the kids with us. Once we got to the hospital they asked a bunch of questions and gave him some pain medication. That helped make the pain so it wasn't so unbearable, but it was still quite painful. They took a CT and found that the cause of all the pain was a kidney stone. They then gave him a little bit of morphine, and after a little while sent him home, telling him the stone would probably pass within 24-48 hours. They said the stone was only 3mm, so not a really large one, but a large enough one to be quite painful. Apparently the ureter (tubes between the kidney and bladder) are only about 1mm in diameter. Some pain medication was prescribed. We returned back home at about 6:30, and Elise was going to go to Wal-Mart to get a hot pad, and find out when the pharmacy opened to get Tom's prescription filled. On the drive home Tom's pain went away, and he thought it was just because he was sitting just right or something. Once we got home Tom went to the bathroom, and out came the stone. Luckily it all happened in a short 4 hours, and didn't last for the 24-48 hours the hospital had said. Before leaving for the hospital Tom had said a prayer that everything would work out for the best, and it turns out that it did. Tom was planning to take the day of to deal with the stone, but since it came out at 6:30 he decided he would go to work because he felt good enough to go. Of course he felt good enough to go to work, he was on some type of pain medicine and morphine. So, Tom went to work. Luckily he doesn't operate any heavy machinery and his company doesn't do random drug testing. Just kidding. :) Hopefully he doesn't get another one in the future, because it sure was not fun. If anyone knows of anyone else in the family that has had a kidney stone, please let us know. It would be nice to know if his stone could be linked to hereditary by any chance.