Thursday, November 12, 2009

Kidney Stone

If you search Wikipedia for "worst pain ever experienced" the #1 result is "kidney stone". Until a couple of weeks ago I didn't really know what kidney stones were and the worst pain I'd ever experienced was appendicitis nearly six years back.

All that changed, though:

  • Sat; arrive back from England
  • Sun evening; go to bed just fine
  • Mon 7am; go to work as usual
  • Mon 1pm; do three back-to-back phone interviews with Google job candidates
  • Mon 6pm; go home
  • Mon 9pm; go to bed, still jetlagged from England
  • Mon 9.05pm; sudden severe pain in left side of abdomen
  • Mon 9.10pm; out of bed, agony
  • Mon 9.15pm; writhing on floor. Wendy calls an ambulance
  • Mon 9.25pm; completely incapacitated, speechless with pain
  • Mon 9.30pm; paramedics arrive and deliver oxygen, IV and ECG
  • Mon 9.50pm; arrive at the hospital, given intravenous narcotics
  • Mon 10.40pm; drugged out out of my mind, receive a CT scan
  • Mon 11.15pm; diagnosis from physicians in Australia, working in-timezone (seriously!): kidney stone in right kidney
  • Tue 12.15am; arrive home and go to bed
  • Tue 8am; painkillers
  • Tue 10am; painkillers
  • Tue 12pm; painkillers and sleep
  • Tue 4pm; write up interview feedback
  • Tue 9pm; painkillers and more sleep
  • Wed 7am; back to work, not very comfortable, painkillers
  • Wed 1pm; three more back-to-back phone interviews
  • Wed 8.30pm; "egress" of a kidney stone the size of half a grain of rice
  • Wed 8.31pm; feeling fine, pain-free
  • Wed 9pm; write up interview feedback

The strangest thing.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel pain just reading this! Glad you're ok dude :-)

A Guy on the Internet said...

How did the on-narcotics vs. off-narcotics candidates fare? I find that morphine makes me more generous.

Julian said...

Wow. all that pain. for something so small. Glad you're on the path to quick recovery!

Clancy said...

Any chance we'll ever be able to see that interview feedback that you wrote up between downing painkillers?
I lived with gallstones for about 6 years as I kept getting misdiagnosed by doctors. I think I still have them somewhere.
Anyway, glad you are ok now!