MY SUITCASE OF MEMORIES: I Fought The Stone And The Stone Won

by
Al Bruno III

Part One

My problems all began when I started peeing blood.

Now, that is one hell of an opening line, right?

I’ve had kidney stones before, and for those of you who don’t know, it is not a pleasant experience, but I know what to expect and how to react.

But blood? That was a new one.

I left work early and called my General Practitioner. They were having an early Christmas party, so they referred me to their urgent care center, but they were having a Christmas party too. Since it was a Friday, I took a lot of over-the-counter painkillers and went to bed early. In my addled mind, I imagined the staff of my doctor’s office singing ailment-specific Christmas carols to me.

Like this one;

“Oh kidney stone, oh kidney stone
Will it break your urethra…”

The pain and blood faded as I spent the weekend taking it easy and watching television. Regular doses of MST3k and Doctor Who are always good for what ails me, and by Monday, I was feeling fine, so I headed out for my appointment with my therapist, Dr. Bernardo. It was the early days of our therapeutic relationship but he was hard at work trying to understand how I could have both a god complex and low self-esteem. That day, he asked me if I had any unresolved childhood trauma. I jokingly told him that sometimes I fantasize about digging up my long-dead kindergarten teacher and punching her in the face.

Something about Dr. Barnardo’s gentle squeak of horror made me realize I might have gone a bit too far. It was in the middle of my apologizing for the remark that a fresh bout of pain hit me in the kidney.

And this was bad, folks; it felt like my loins were aflame- and not in a good romance novel way. I cut the therapy session short and spent about half an hour in the bathroom dealing with pain and nausea; when I could walk again, I headed out to my car to my General practitioner’s office.

I didn’t have an appointment, but my begging skills were top-shelf that day, and they rushed me right in to see him. Or maybe it was just because they wanted to get rid of the big bald idiot curled into a ball and whimpering on the waiting room floor.

Preliminary tests revealed that my urine was the color of Hawaiian Punch and my face was the color of Mountain Dew. The general practitioner gave me a shot of a painkiller and referred me to a urologist; the urologist saw me right away.

More tests were performed, internal organs were scanned, and co-pays were deferred. I was informed that I had a four-millimeter kidney stone trying to make its way into my bladder via a 5ml vein, leading to a situation much like the time I tried to fit into that pair of corduroy slacks I refused to throw away.

The urologist gave me two sets of pills and a funnel with a mesh at the end. One set of drugs was a week’s worth of Vicodin. The other was to widen out my urological tract and grease the gears, if you will; the wire mesh was so I could strain my urine and catch the kidney stone. At first, I thought this would be a great thing- I could give the kidney stone away to one of my lucky readers as a prize!

The urologist put the kibosh on that; he needed to take kidney stones for tests. Oh well.

I also got a note for a week off from work, but I wasn’t sure that would save my job. It wasn’t that any of my six supervisors were bad people, but when you work for an organization that considers Goldings’s Lord of the Flies a training manual, you have to be a little worried.

Upon arriving home, I barely said anything to my wife Gloria and my daughter Hazel and went to bed early. When my wife finally turned in, I was feeling a little better, and as my body is 98% hormones, I tried to put the moves on her, and she put moves right back, but sadly, the day had been too traumatic for my manhood. What should have been a gentle and beautiful expression of our love became a frustrating taffy pull.

The following day, I called in sick to work, but in retrospect, I should have waited until after this was accomplished before I took a Vicodin. For those of you who haven’t followed my work closely (That’s you, Western Hemisphere.) I should inform you that in my 41 years, I had never tried illegal drugs of any sort. This is because of my high principles and intense cowardice.

The end result of this is that as I was on hold waiting for a supervisor to give them the news of my extended absence, the Vicodin hit me like a freight train and I told them that I loved them. Then I called back and did it again. I might have done it a third time if I hadn’t suddenly become enraptured with the screen saver on my computer. I might not have survived if flying toasters had still been a thing.

I spent the next seven days in a stupor. Whenever I napped, my dreams were in color and the stuff of fanfic, but they were poisoned by the constant ache in my bladder. If I were the captain of a starship, I would find that a transporter accident had caused there to be only one bathroom for the entire crew to use, and that bathroom’s location was constantly changing. Many crew members had already lost control of their bladders, but I, their captain, was fighting to keep control. But it already seemed like a lost cause; no one was at their station, and there were Klingons everywhere. As you can imagine, it was a Yellow Alert.

Sometime during this long, hazy week, I somehow insulted my 8-year-old daughter’s playmate. I know I made her cry, but I’m not sure what I said. I mean, I have a vague idea it had something to do with her preferring Joe as a host of Blues Clues instead of Steve- AND WHAT KIND OF SOULESS HALFWIT WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?

Later on  I staggered over to their house to make an apology. It was sincere and heartfelt, and I think there was some forgiveness in their eyes when they came out onto their porch to ask me why I had been talking to their mailbox for twenty minutes.

Part Two

Did I mention that my urologist, Dr. Wertighast, was bald? It was clearly a fashion statement of the manliest kind, as opposed to my brand of genetic baldness that had left me looking like Charlie Brown all grown up. I stared at his shiny shorn pate in frustration and learned that the kidney stone was having trouble passing. I had a similar problem with the ninth grade.

I sighed, “So I spent a week straining my urine for nothing.”

“I understand your frustration.” He said.
 
Straining your urine. Sounds kind of absurd, doesn’t it? Well, it looks pretty damn absurd when you’re doing it- I can tell you that; a solid week of standing at the toilet, one hand holding good old Thunder Lizard and the other a plastic funnel with a fine mesh at the bottom.

And please don’t forget that most of the time I was doing this, I was stoned out of my mind on Vicodin. I hit my toes and my bathrobe, and in one moment of combined brilliance and clumsiness, I even managed to ricochet my urine stream off the lip of the plastic funnel back into my eye.

The line between medical science and a fetish video is a fine one indeed.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

He explained, “Two days from now, you come down to the surgery center. We put you under and get that stone out before it causes serious damage. It looks like it should come out pretty easily. I don’t think cutting will be necessary, but you will need a stent.”

I wasn’t sure what a stent was, but if it was the alternative to having my Weiner cut open, I was ready to take two and call him in the morning.

The drive home from the urologist was a somber experience, to say the least. I had always assumed that if I were going to pay someone to manhandle my junk, it would have been a sprightly Korean woman with red hair, masseuse training, and a willingness to wear a spangly catsuit similar to the one Wendy Padbury wore in the 1968 Doctor Who serial The Mind Robber.

When I told my family the news, my wife was the epitome of love and concern. My daughter’s only comment was that she hoped it didn’t ruin her plans for the school’s holiday party.

And THAT is why I never bought her a pony.

There were a lot of butterflies in my stomach those next two days. Yes, I knew I would be unconscious; yes, I knew this was a simple outpatient procedure, but my imagination wouldn’t let those facts take hold. I couldn’t believe the same wonderful imagination that had helped me run years of role-playing games and write reams of stories about Booger Monsters From Outer space was betraying me like this.

That night, after we had put my daughter to bed, my wife tried to take my mind off my troubles the way that wives normally always can. Things were going great, but my imagination wasn’t through with me. I began to worry. What if the nurses pointed and laughed? What if I contracted some flesh-eating bacteria from a dirty scalpel, or perhaps there might be an earthquake in the middle of the operation? What if I woke during the procedure?

My God! What if my insurance decided they weren’t going to cover the bill?

Our romantic interlude ended disappointingly for the both of us and now I had a new worry.

Would the surgeon notice the slightly bluish tinge to my balls?

Part Three

The day of my ureteroscopy came, and there was a lot to be thankful for. I was thankful that my mother-in-law was able to drive me there and back because my wife’s employer refused to give her time off. I was thankful that checking in at the front desk went easily with no last-minute drama from my medical insurance. I was thankful that the Nursing Supervisor put me at ease with her gentle nature and no-nonsense demeanor. I was especially thankful that the woman given the duty of shaving my groin had a steady hand and a good sense of humor.

They gave me an IV, and I watched them inject something into it. I thought to ask them how long it would be before it took effect, but before the words could leave my mouth, darkness had rolled over my mind like a dark wave. The last time I was put under for an operation, I was six years old and there had been such dreams! Dreams of surreal creatures that looked like crayon drawings come to life, dancing against purple sunsets, and romantic dates with Wendy from The Superfriends in a K-Mart that might have been a spaceship.

You know, normal stuff.

My modern experiences with sedation were very different things. The drugs they give now send me into a thoughtless brief oblivion that seems to threaten to go on forever.

Truth be told, the memory, or perhaps I should say non-memory of it, haunts me. It's what I fear dying might be like. I still can't imagine what's worse: no afterlife at all or an afterlife that ends up being like an ethereal and inescapable family reunion. I can almost see it now: dozens of Bruno souls voluntarily exiling themselves to purgatory or reincarnating as tapeworms to avoid talking to me.

I didn’t wake up smoothly after the procedure. I felt like I was choking and struggling. Later, I found out that during anesthesia, my breathing significantly slowed down, leading to the need for intubation.

The anesthesiologist asked me why I hadn’t mentioned this problem, and while I would have liked to have explained, I had no idea; I was too busy coughing in the aftermath of having a plastic tube down my throat. Before the conversation. Could go further I realized I had to pee.

At first, I thought the nurse who helped me down the hallway was lurching wildly. However, upon entering the restroom, I realized it couldn't have been her because the bathroom was lurching wildly, too. Once I was certain of my footing, I shifted aside the fabric of my muumuu-like hospital gown.

The almost frantic need to relieve myself was forgotten the moment I caught a glimpse of my manhood. The doctor had left a pin-hole-sized incision at the base of my urethral opening, and from that incision, there dangled a small length of dark blue string.

My first reaction was to mumble, “How very festive.”

My second was a sound similar to the Wilhelm Scream.

The nurse that responded to the sound assured me that, yes, that string was supposed to be there; it was part and parcel with getting a stent.

As I was led back to my room so I could get changed back into my street clothes, I learned several things. I learned that it had actually taken them three tries to intubate me due to an oddly shaped windpipe. I learned that the kidney stone they removed from me was only 2 millimeters in diameter, shaped like the spaceship that had rocketed Superman to Earth in the 1978 film and had pretty much hooked itself into the flesh of my urethra.

I learned that I had three new prescriptions to take for the next two weeks, one of which was Oxycodne. I learned that the blue string meant that a stent had been run along the length of my urethra so the damage done by the stone and surgery could be repaired; it would remain in place for the next 11 days, and during that time, I would experience painful urination that would have blood as well as the occasional stone fragment or scab. I also learned how many times I could say the word ‘urethra’ in a single story and still keep my listeners.

The number is five, by the way.

Once I was home, my wife and mother-in-law put me to bed. My daughter had a Christmas pageant that night, but there was no way I was able to go, and that made me really sad, at least until the Oxycodone kicked in; then I spent the next few hours trying to explain Doctor Who’s UNIT dating controversy to my dogs.

The 12 days of Christmas passed in a pleasant haze; I watched TV, I played video games, I overate, but sadly, I couldn't sleep comfortably unless I was sitting up on the couch. The In-Laws came over for Christmas, and it was a great visit. I was too woozy to put together my daughter's new two-story doll house, but her grandpa picked up the slack quite nicely. While he did that, my daughter baked me snacks with her new Easy Bake oven until she ran out of mix. Just as well  really, I was about to slip into diabetic shock.

Finally, December 29th rolled around, and it was time to have the stent removed. I was glad of it. I had been out of work for over twenty days by then, and I was actually starting to miss the soul-crushing drudgery of phone-based customer support and the challenge of stealing office supplies.

Dr. Wertighast told me that everything was good and that once the stent was removed, I would be able to relieve myself without trauma or speaking in tongues. As I sat there with my pants low and my hopes high, I asked him what kind of sedation would be used to remove the stent. He told me not to worry about that as he pulled on his rubber gloves and told me to stand over a waste basket.

So yeah, I was worried.

He told me that I would feel some momentary discomfort. I asked him to define discomfort, but instead, he just pulled the string.

Having a tube pulled out of your schmeckle feels like you’re e whizzing out a ten-foot stream of hot coffee on a cold winter day. I made the same kinds of sounds that Curly from the Three Stooges made when he caught his head in something.

“There,” he said to me. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”

What I should have said back was, “It wasn’t very fucking good.”

But I was too stunned by one of my body parts becoming part of a variation on the old magician's trick of pulling a mile of handkerchiefs out of someone’s sleeve. Wide-eyed and confused, I walked to my car and drove home. My family was waiting for me, and to celebrate the end of my ordeal, my favorite dinner was waiting for me.

I stared at my plate for a long time, but eventually, I tucked in. I watched a movie with my daughter and then put her to bed. Afterward, I headed for the bathroom, and all was well with the world. One flush of the toilet and tooth brushing later, I got into bed with my wife. We made small talk, we flirted, and then we embraced.

But I was worried. It had been six weeks, six weeks of renal ravaging and genitourinary grief. Would I still be able to do, humbly speaking, the only other thing I’m really good at?

I am happy to report that the stone may have been gone but I rocked her world.