My husband is home on leave for a couple weeks. He took the girls out while running a couple errands and here I am...in a wretched mood. The girls really stressed me out today and I'm having a hard time shaking it.
For some reason, hardly 100% psychological (I doubt), kidney pain always comes on the strongest when I'm stressed. I think being stressed does something to the pain receptors in your brain, like that emotional state weakens your resolve and sucks your endorphins dry. Sure, the pain was there the whole time, but on several occasions throughout the years, when I've been under great stress, the pain comes on like getting blindsided by a train. This doesn't mean I'm in tons of pain, it just means I feel the pain relative to what's going on inside of me. Tonight, it's that annoying salesman-knocking-at-your-door pain. A pain that's letting me know that the stones are back earlier than usual. Great.
I haven't been taking very good care of myself over the past couple months. I haven't been eating well, and I haven't been taking my meds. Do I care? No - no regrets even now that I'm feeling pain again. Classic depression. I'm a logical person. I know I need to stay well while my husband is in Japan for the sake of my children, but I've gotten to the point where I just don't care and I'm struggling with everything on an hour-to-hour basis. Part of it is how I still don't have any Zofran but I'm trying to take care of that now as I write this.
There are so many people out there who have it worse than I do. Some people would be glad to have cystinuria vs. whatever ails them. Gawd I feel like an ass for complaining.
On a side note, despite my awesome Stanford GP and the care in general, I really miss my old setup at the Naval Hospital and my civilian doc. Things happen quick in less-populated areas/on base. Here I have to wait weeks for a CT to get approved by Tricare, despite my diagnosis. There I could go on base and talk to Dave the CT guy. Sigh.
/ramble
1 comments:
I recently discovered your blog, and occasionally check in to see how you're doing.
I have cystinuria, but haven't had a kidney stone in 30+ years. At one time, I had surgery on both kidneys to remove stones that literally filled up both kidneys. I was on cuprimine for 15 years, until the skin side effects forced me off of it.
I don't have the most serious kind of cystinuria, not the least either, somewhere in the middle.
At this point I really don't do any preventive measures, except to drink lots of water and follow a vegetarian diet. I don't recommened this, just saying that is what I do.
However, what I wanted to address in your blog post is stress. During the time my worst episode of kidney stones occurred (I was 24), I was in tremendous stress. Also, I was on the Adkins diet -- too much protein which I think helped bring on my nightmare scenario.
I wonder if there are any studies about cystinuria/stress? It has occurred to me that stress (and diet) might actually somehow create the metabolic conditions for cystinuria stones to develop -- or maybe not.
Anyway, hang in there. I know the suffering of kidney stones, and most people just have no concept of that misery.
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