this is starting to sound familiar...

it's 4:00 am. I have been up for about an hour crying in pain, unable to sleep, barely able to move. it's at this point I give up, call my friend Katie, and head into the ER.

by 7:00 am, I have had a huge dose of morphine, my blood pressure drops to 70/40 (which is dangerously low, even compared to my already fairly low blood pressure), and after passing out in the bathroom, i am laying in a CAT scan trying to stay awake long enough to hold my breath for an accurate reading.

by 11:00 am, after I had finally woken up from an almost comatose sleep, I'm told that I have a kidney stone that is large enough to completely block the exit of my right kidney, and infected enough to disable my kidney if left untreated.

so that's it. that is the answer to my feeling shitty. a huge kidney stone, about 1 centimeter in diameter (huge when you think that is about a third of an inch, and the exit path for the kidney is only about 2 centimeters) so infected that it is killing my kidney. the end.

well, not really.

i stay in the hospital for about 36 hours, they are unable to break up my stone because the machine (that is shared between several hospitals in atlanta) is scheduled for another hospital that day. so I go back in to the hospital in a week to get it broken up and removed, which will include anesthesia, and I can only assume, pain.

talk about putting a cramp in my style.