One of my most distinct memories is of this extremely nice neighbor standing over me as I withered on the floor in pain saying “Don’t worry – I bet one of your ovaries is just exploding. It happened to a girlfriend of mine”.
Don’t worry – one of your ovaries is probably just exploding. Yes. I won’t worry.
I never changed clothes. Somehow my dad got me to the ER in record time and when I woke up from the most glorious pain medicine ever created, I first heard the word kidney stone.
Personally I think they should rename kidney stones to something more fitting such as little rocks with demonic powers.
After that I had many back to back over a very short timespan. Finally I met with a urologist and came up with a plan to get the stones blasted to pieces during the next attack since insurance would cover more if it happened during an active kidney stone attack.
That little conversation is all it took. After that I never had another kidney stone.
Until this year.
A few months ago I was hit with a kidney stone in the middle of the night. It was Mr. Byrd’s first kidney stone experience. It was also the first time we’ve had to take all the kids to the ER in the middle of the night.
This past Saturday night it happened again.
The actual attack is horrible and worse than natural childbirth, in my opinion. Afterwards you’re so looped up on pain medicine that you just sleep for a day. Then the other fun sets in. Until you pass the kidney stone there’s pain and nausea. There’s not enough to keep you in bed, just enough to slow you down and remind you that kidney stones are in fact, of the devil.
Even though Mr. Byrd has been a saint this past week, there’s only so many times you want to hear someone tell you to go to bed.
Lounging around in bed gets really boring after awhile. Please remind me that I said that in a few weeks when I’m better and would love nothing more than to relax in bed all day.
Yesterday afternoon I felt horrible. Mr. Byrd was semi-hiding from the grumpiness that I was while also trying to be sweet and help me.
But I did not want to go back to bed
So instead I did a painting project that I had wanted to try for awhile.
I wanted to try a whimsical style of painting that is done on a black background with a mostly dry brush. The hardest part for me is that you’re not really supposed to blend the colors. I LOVE to blend colors where you can’t see where one color ends and the other starts. Not blending colors was really hard.
Was my whimsical painting perfect? No.
The sunflower petals were too big. I should have made them skinnier to show off the black background in between each petal. The leaves look funny and I did blend the colors a little, which turned out to be too much.
Even though it wasn’t the perfect result, it was the perfect project.
I got to sit down and paint without thinking much about it and without worrying about creating a painting worth of Monet.
Now that is therapy for the soul that has no price.
