I missed the rain........

.......this morning.

You know how good it feels to wake up about 5:30 of a morning to hear the rain on the roof.........splattering on the windows and gurgling down the drain. Oh yeah....
.....I missed that.

What I heard......and what I never hope to hear coming from deep within me.......were
moans of pain and sobs of agony that were as close as I ever hope to be to having kidney stones for myself.

The Wife woke me with the tearful question of "how do you know when you have kidney stones"?

My reply was "I don't know, I've never had them but from the sound of it you got 'em".

When you don't have insurance you tend to want to wait to see if the pain will go away, or if a heating pad to the afflicted area will help.......or at least cause the pain to ease ...... if only for a few minutes. Men tend to want to fix things themselves of course.......tighten it a few turns with a crescent wrench.... bang on it with a shop hammer to see if the vibration gets worse or goes away.....

But soon it was apparent that the thing to do was go to the emergency room. Youngest daughter working at one of the two local hospitals determined which one we chose.
Both are excellent but after all having someone you know there makes you feel a little less alone and perhaps she can pull a few strings.

Emergency room check in........if you're not spurting arterial streams against the wall...... are designed to make you wait......even though you're screaming inside "Hey!, these sorry ...........'s sitting out here with their runny noses and crying brats who simply don't want to go to school today.....aren't important. Get my sobbing wife into a room and shoot her up with some kind of liquid Pain Off".

Eventually we are taken back and she's checked and an hour later a doctor comes by for a minute and prescribes some painkiller. All this time she's groaning and moaning "It Hurts". And if you're any kind of man at all......you feel helpless and worthless at not being able to fix "it".

Minutes before the nurse brings in the saline drip and the pain shot, the pain eases up a little and the wife is able to lean back on the bed. Then the shot takes effect and blessings of blessings she is able to relax and even doze a little.

About halfway thru the bag of saline the urge to go comes upon her again, so, clutching the back of the hospital gown with one hand while I carry the IV and hang it on the nail over the toilet, she shuffles across. She comes back with the urine sample in one hand and the strainer in the other....and with a weary sigh says "it came out". And sure enough......there in the strainer is a small, black tiny stone looking object. If I were to judge it by the diamond gage in my pocket it would have probably fallen through the .05 carat hole.

And so.......that was that. The CAT scan showed no more objects waiting to spring upon her. An hour and a half later the doctor came by and prescribed a precautionary round of antibiotics and pain medication and signed the release form..

And so home........

Boys and girls, I'll tell you one thing.............that's as close as I ever want to be to one of those things. Whew!