Had my ass kicked by such a tiny little fucker

[Simon]

Hello again world

It's been awhile since I've been here. Nothing to do with business at all, just had a few days of horrible abdominal pains that I thought were a combination of food poisoning and constipation. Turned out it was a damn kidney stone. I learned that one of those tiny little fuckers can really cause some serious pain.

Wound up having a neighbor take me to the local hospital emergency room one night when the pain got to be too much to handle. After some tests, scans and x-rays, they sent me all the way up to the mainland via ambulance. Spent a few days up there in a beautiful new hospital while they confirmed there was nothing they were going to do except discharge me 100+ miles from home and let me go back home with some meds and their best wishes on the passing of the stone.

Seems that below a certain size they don't do any of the 3 or 4 potential procedures to remove the stone since it's possible to let it pass on its own. So after too many days in windowless rooms with no clocks, I wound up at home taking antibiotics, a flow enhancer, and some pills for when the pains got too bad. The pain pills caused the constipation that I thought I had in the beginning of this adventure, and when that passed the other two meds caused diarrhea, so the past week has been an absolute laugh riot around here.

Anyway, haven't felt much like eating, sleeping or working until today, but I thought I'd take a minute to post something now that I'm feeling a little better. I don't know if I've passed the damn stone yet but this is Day 2 without pain so we'll see how it goes.

I'm going to go read the board for awhile and see what I've missed while I've been away. Thanks again to those who contacted me via icq, email and phone to ask why I hadn't been around. As always, it feels good to be part of the community around here.