A Real Nonpartisan Issue: Kidney Stones

Each busy person knows all about full schedules. It is also true that as a busy person looks over the schedule at some point in the process they begin to think there is no place to add another appointment, meeting or event.

October is one of my favorite months. The cooler weather is teasing that we will have relief from the long hot dry days of summer before winter sets in with the bone chilling cold that it brings. If there is such a thing as having favorite times of the year, spring and fall are my favorite seasons. April and October embody all I like about keeping a busy lifestyle.

When October hits, we have high school, college, and professional football. The World Series is always played in October finishing off the baseball season. Arts and crafts festivals have been taking up any slack time on calendars in recent years during October. Concerts, school and church events crowd in even more on an already overflowing calendar. A recent announcement was made that during the hunting season, the metro area is adding a lingerie football league. On top of all the above listed space fillers this is an election year. As a person who writes about political, cultural, and ethical issues, the thirty-one (31) days of October could not be any fuller.

Oh, wait, I was wrong. There is one more thing that can suddenly change everything by altering priorities. Without regard for calendar, race, gender, opinions or positions being expressed during this election cycle, suddenly and without warning, a kidney stone can change everything. Being a long time veteran of kidney stone attacks  (50 attacks in 48 years), I should not have been as surprised as I was on October 5, when from the deepest pit of the netherworld came my newest attack.

Sitting now, having had two surgeries and with a promise the stone is crushed, it is still hanging in there. For anyone reading this column that has experienced a kidney stone, it requires no further explanation. Kidney stones yield a pain like no other. The treatments increase, rather than decrease pain.

Over these many years, I could fill volumes of books with home remedies (that do not work) to reduce the chance of having another stone. The usual admonition from friends is for them to say, “Take it easy, and get well.” I have found that piece of advice not to work. There is no rest until the stone is gone and then there is the awareness the pain could return at any moment, day or night. Each of us has medical or physical needs requiring attention from time to time. The sudden attack of a kidney stone without warning is what causes those of us who have these attacks to seek out ways to one day know we will never have another such attack.

From where I stand, the most nonpartisan pain known is a sudden kidney stone attack.

Have you ever had a kidney stone? Have you found any home remedies that work? Let us know in the comments.

Follow Ray Newman on Twitter @RayNewmanSr

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