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Red Urine
What really woke me up that morning was pissing blood into the toilet bowl. I didn?t have health insurance and I?m not a real fan of running to doctors. I went to work a little worried, with a wait and see attitude. As the day went by the color faded to dark tea, but the next morning the red was almost as strong as before. When I saw my chiropractor later that day he told me to talk with an urologist down the road. The urologist sent me to an X-ray lab for tests, telling me that even though I had no pain I may have a kidney stone.
My mother gets kidney stones and her pain seems pretty severe but she?s also a bit of a hypochondriac. I?ve banged myself up so many times and broken enough bones that doctors have warned me that I?m dangerously pain tolerant.
When I went to the lab for tests I knew the technician, a Japanese woman that had owned an oriental grocery store in town that I used to shop at. She had sold the store a few years before when she didn?t think it was making enough money for the time she put into it, and I hadn?t seen her since. We were yakking it up like old buddies, which distressed the doctor because he felt ignored.
When the x-rays were developed we could see the kidney stone was one third down the duct and the backed-up kidney was one third larger than the other was.
Back at my urologist I was told that my two options were either an ultrasound treatment that would break up the stone in place, or the insertion of a catheter that would be snaked up the duct and past the stone. Then a balloon at the end of the catheter would be inflated and the tube would be pulled out, taking the stone with it. Under sedation, of course.
Each procedure ran about $4,000. I didn?t have that kind of money and I didn?t have insurance. He offered to waive his $400 fee, but that wasn?t much help.
I still wasn?t in any pain and I wasn?t pissing out as much blood. I had knocked back on my liquid of life, coffee, and was drinking a lot of water and cranberry juice. Oh, and the urologist told me I could drink beer.
He went on to tell me the stone was probably too large to pass, and that I might lose the kidney if I waited to long. I told him I would try to raise the money and left. A week or so later I started to feel the pain. Just a dull ache, not the fall-on-the ground screaming I had heard described by others, but pain nevertheless.
The ache woke me up about 4 am on the morning I had to attend the funeral of my stepfather?s mother. The funeral was in Brooklyn, and knowing I wasn?t going to be able to get any more sleep I decided to go into NYC?s Chinatown to see how it started the day. I was familiar with the area, but had never seen it that early in the morning. I got in a little after 5 am; just as the breakfast shops were opening. I went into one for breakfast and had never seen most of the things they were serving. I pointed to a flat noodle wrapped around ground meat, kind of like a wet, slimy burrito, that most of the other people were eating, for myself. It wasn?t that great, and I kept nosing around Chinatown until it was time to go.
During the funeral and luncheon I kept wondering what the Chinese people did for kidney stones. I realize in retrospect that they don?t have much calcium in their diets, which is what most kidney stones are composed of. I just thought that many areas wouldn?t have enough fresh water, balloon-tipped catheters or ultrasound equipment.
After the luncheon was over I went back to Chinatown to check out the apothecary shops. They were easy to spot; they always had the front windows filled with herbs and ginseng roots. When I got back to NYC the San Genero Festival was in full swing, and I had to park on the north side of Little Italy and walk down to Chinatown, which is the next neighborhood south.
Beer is plentiful during the festival, and I had a couple as I walked downtown. I had a nice buzz on from the drinks at lunch and the beers when I started hitting the herb shops. By the third shop I found someone that spoke English and I asked him about remedies for kidney stones.
He reached behind to a shelf and took down a blue box and handed to me. The only thing in English lettering on the box was ?Shin Ling Tong?, but the rice paper directions inside with the bottle of 100 tablets told me to take 6 pills every 2 hours until the stone was flushed. At $2.95 a bottle I asked for three bottles. The clerk was surprised, and I explained that I was coming from LI. If they worked and I needed more than one bottle it would cost me a lot more than that to come back, and if they didn?t work an extra six bucks was no big deal.
The rice paper directions said that ?Western? science had determined that the only effect of the herb was to relax the smooth muscles in the urinary tract. Walking back through the SG Feast I downed another beer with six pills and headed back home.
Traffic was stopped dead on the BQE just before the Kosciusko Bridge when I felt a wave of cool wash over my body, and then I had to piss like a racehorse. I left my car where it was in the middle of traffic and went to the side of the bridge. Out came the brownest, foulest smelling urine I?ve ever had. Even though I pissed out a quart and a half of beer, traffic hadn?t moved when I got back into my car.
I kept taking the pills, but I cut back on the amount. I was starting to smell like the pills, which wasn?t pleasant, and I was feeling a little fuzzy. When I?d start to feel the pain again I?d pop a couple more. At work a few weeks later I felt a pinch when I was using the men?s stall and I heard a small clink in the bowl. I found the stone, about the size of a medium oblong pea. It was made of dirty, sand-like crystals and looked like a small natural sponge. I should have kept it, but my urologist wanted to make sure it was calcium, which it was, and not something exotic that could be a symptom of something other than not drinking enough water.
I suppose I could grow another if I wanted, but I?m in no rush.