The economy is passing a kidney stone. Here’s one man’s guide to survival.
By Bill Whittle
Just before noon I felt a little . . . something. Five minutes later it felt like someone had punched me in the left kidney — hard. I went back to the edit bay to lie down for a moment. Things got a little better, then worse, then much worse. And then someone said they were going to drive me to the hospital.
The Hospital. No health insurance. Why? A preexisting surgery made me tough to insure, but the fact is, I had gotten away with it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. So I was trusting to luck for a while. And I had been lucky — for a while.
Next thing I know I’m bent over in the hallway, waiting for the car to come around — hands on my knees like I’d run a marathon. And then — BAM! I’m kneeling in front of the couch, arms wrapped around the cushion, making sounds like frying grease . . . little pops and grunts and hisses. Ten minutes in and I was beneath language already.
The only thing I remember about the drive to the hospital was that it was slow. I scratched my name on some forms, left my clothes on the bathroom floor after getting undressed, and didn’t give one sweet damn about any of that gown nonsense. I staggered out just holding the thing on. Because by now, my friends, my world was just a white-hot blinding light — all around me, the entire room was just bathed in that wall of pain and the only thing I cared about was getting that shot.
Little problem, here, however: They didn’t actually keep the pain medicine in the same place as the actual people having the actual pain. No, that had to be signed out of the pharmacy. The nurse made a call, a guy said he’d bring it down “as soon as he could” and that meant about another 25 minutes before Nurse Kessie — bless her — decided it was taking too long and went up to get it herself.
It took me about an hour to get the first shot of Demerol . . . which did absolutely nothing. It took another hour for me to discover it wasn’t working, tough it out for a while so I didn’t look like a complete baby, then ask for another shot, get it delivered, and injected.
Out of the Cave 