NFL football and a kidney stone makes a most interesting day

Yesterday Chill and I went to Houston for the Texans-49ers game. The game itself was pretty brutal (especially for cousin quarterback Shaun Hill), but some highlights of the game:

• Sitting 11 rows up from the field. We were so very close.
• Alex Smith replaces Shaun in the second half, when the 49ers almost came back from a 21-0 deficit. Made for quite an exciting finish, but not sure if this is a good or bad thing?
• Three army people parachuting into the stadium from the sky, one holding an American flag and another holding a football. This was pretty awesome.
• The Bushes were at the game. HW and W were witnesses of the game-opening coin toss. When we found out they were there, first thing we thought? “Um, I’m not sure how safe I feel being in the same stadium as these guys…”
• Seeing Shaun after the game. First thing he said? “Since I’ve been playing this sport, that was only the second game I’ve started and didn’t finish.” FYI, the first time was when he was at Maryland and got injured. Yep, this time it’s a bit different…
• Houston’s lightrail = awesome. When is Austin’s going to become available???

After the game we had dinner with Chill’s mom. This is when the real fun begins. About 15 minutes after finishing dinner, I started feeling a sharp, acute pain on my left side. At first I thought it was a cramp or something, so no big deal. But then I started feeling nausea and the pain was getting worse. My natural instinct is to lay down and curl into a ball to make things feel better, but nothing made it feel better, and every movement felt like it was making it worse. While the vomiting and nausea made us think it could be food poisoning, no one else was getting sick, and the pain in my side was very sharp and constant and did not subside at all, only worsened. We decided to head to an emergency clinic, and after lots of drugs and tests, voila - it was a kidney stone! 18 hours later, I am feeling almost back to normal, but looking back at it all feels very surreal.

• FYI, kidney stones = severe, severe pain. I hope I (and you) never have to go through that again. The doc asked me what it felt like on a pain scale of 1 to 10. My answer was 9. I may probably be a wuss, but considering other pains I’ve felt in my life (which is not very much, I’m guessing), this was pretty bad. I mean, I couldn’t even concentrate nearly enough to watch the NFL and MLB games on TV, I was feeling so horrible. Plus, read this Wikipedia article: “…described as one of the strongest pain sensations felt by humans (including the pain of labor pains in a female)”. So there!
• For the first time in my life, I had the most pleasant experience of getting an IV. They pumped over 1.5 liters of fluid into me. Plus drugs, lots of drugs. Morphine? Been there, done that.
• Getting a CAT scan made me feel like I was in a Sci-Fi movie. Look at how fast the thing is spinning around! OK, I was probably a bit effected by the first round of pain and nausea medications I got into my IV… but it was still cool. And it was distractive enough that I actually felt the best during the scan than any other period in the place.
• I slept for 12 hours after all the hoopla, I still feel drowsy/tired… those meds really did the trick, eh?
• Chill being the most supportive = best ever.

One of the nurses gave me a CD with my CAT scan stuff on it. Guess that means pictures are soon to come. :)