November 10-11, 2018
Kidney Stone Watch:
We got back from Bretaye and ramped up to leave the following weekend for a family gathering in the Jura. I was starting to feel even more nervous about heading somewhere that wasn’t close to a hospital and spending a bunch of time with Luc’s family not feeling great.
On Tuesday, I got some herbal remedies for the stone: olive oil to drink, lemons to help break it apart, there was a spray that I needed to take 6 times a day, some pills to help with my kidney function and apple cider vinegar. I also started doing visualizations of the stone passing.
On Wednesday, my sister-in-law did some massage and reiki on my abdomen to see if that would help move the stone.
On the Thursday night, I woke up at 2am in a lot of pain. I tried breathing through it, but after 2 hours of wriggling and breathing in agony I woke up Luc and said we needed to go to the hospital to get some drugs.
We got to the hospital and pretty quickly they had me in a bed and hooked up to morphine. I felt immediately better. I had hoped that this would be the emergency that would have me have the surgery for the kidney stone blasting. I needed it to be an emergency or they were just going to wait for the surgery date to come up (could be between then (Mid-November) and February. But it wasn’t deemed an emergency.
They gave me many many drugs to help with the pain if it came back. This was incredibly relieving as I had been having daily pain and feeling uncomfortable for two weeks now and it was really making me feel so exhausted with life and where I was. To finally have some good drugs (not morphine but like morphine) was really like I could take on this for a while longer.
We set off on Saturday for the Jura.
We met up with the family at the hotel, dropped the stuff in the rooms, and set off in two different directions. Half the family went to a kids destination with dinosaurs and I took off to a distillery. We had a great time learning about how the Damassine (liquor made with plums) is made in that part of the country. Then we got to sample some delicious liquors!
That night we all had dinner together and celebrated the birthdays that were around those days and ate a lot of cake and drank some wonderful wine. I headed back early to the hotel as I wasn’t feeling well and really tired and took the most wonderful bath.
The next morning we had a delicious breakfast and then walked around town with some of the family.
Then we headed off to the piece de resistance, Le Fete de St. Martin. This is a weekend where they celebrate a saint by eating all different kinds of pig.
We started the feast at 12pm and didn’t leave until 5pm. 15 courses of mostly pig: pig jelly, pig soup, roast pig, pig with carrots… pig pig pig. I’m not a big fan of pork at the best of times so I politely declined a few of the dishes. And yes, I didn’t even try some of the dishes because no, you don’t even need to try. If you sense some bitterness here, you’re not wrong.
Besides the over abundance of pig eating, it was a wonderful time spent reconnecting with Luc’s cousins, aunts and uncles out on a farm in the country. It’s always hard saying goodbye as it’s really not known when you will see some of them again but we were so grateful to be able to spend this time with them and so thankful to those people who organized it all.
That night we drove back to Jouxtens.
Kidney stone completion
The next morning, I woke up and filtered my pee into a pot as I have been for what felt like weeks and when I looked into the bottom I SAW SOMETHING. My eyes literally bugged out of my head. I started to scream “Luc, oh my god, come here right now!” he came down and looked in the pot. Three pieces of stone. One massive and two tiny. I didn’t even feel it come out.
The relief I felt was like nothing I’ve ever felt – maybe having a baby was better but not by much. Elation, joy, relief, peace, happiness, finality, and beginning my life again. It was over. The pain, the suffering, the wondering, the confusion, the anxiety, the depression, the sadness. Over.
I had walked 800Km, been to Germany, Austria, France, Turkey, Bretaye and the Jura with that stone. It’s unbelievable what I did with that stone looking back. That stone taught me a lot about myself. I can keep going. I can feel all the emotions. I have resiliency. I can ask for support when I need it. It’s ok to feel like you can’t do it one more day and then get up again and do it one more day.
I think it was everything that I did the previous week (taking all the herbal remedies, the massage and reiki and eating all that pig) that helped me pass it. I also think that me giving it over to the universe to say, “ok, you’re in the drivers seat here… what’s going to happen? Are we going to pass this on our own, or are we going to wait for surgery?” for the universe to finally deliver the stone.
Now I can continue on my journey.
