Kind of pretty, huh? To the untrained eye, one might think you were looking at some sort of coral... Or perhaps some sort of geological wonder...

Well, it is a "wonder" all right... But more along the lines of, "I wonder why the h*$#! this had to happen to me right now!.."

What you are looking at, dear friends, is a kidney stone. For the past 15 years or so - and about 3-4 years apart - I have had the "pleasure" of giving birth to one of these little babies... The "labor" associated with one of these generally begins in the middle of the night, and can last 2-4 days... And as is the case with the birth of any baby, there is nausea and phenomenal discomfort associated with the process... However, unlike the birth of a human baby - where doctors can administer an epidural or other wonderful drugs to help a woman with her labor pains - modern medicine offers very little to date to help a poor soul deal with the pain associated with birthing a kidney stone... Conventional pain meds such as ibuprofen (Advil) or Tylenol - or even narcotics such as codeine - won't even touch this "demon child"... And in talking with a few unfortunate women over the years who have given birth to both types of "babies" (fortunately for the female gender, kidney stones are far more frequently a male kind of thing) - well, the overwhelming consensus was that when it comes to pain, they would choose giving birth to a child any day of the week over having a kidney stone...

Guess who sat bolt upright about 1 AM this morning, with that "familiar" nausea followed by an intense pain that begins in the lower back and then translates down into the lower abdominal region??? Right or left side - you take your pick - as you have a kidney in both locations... For the record, this one happens to be a "righty"...

As I write this, I am in-between the "waves of pain" that come and go every few hours as the stone navigates it's way down from the kidney, through this tiny little tube call the ureter, and eventually into the bladder... There, the stone sometimes likes to "roll around" like a marble for a period of time (my last kidney stone hung around in my bladder for over a week), and then begins the 2nd half of the "trip" through the urethra and out of the body at some point in time...

By the way... Did I mention that anatomically the male urethra is much longer then a woman's? And that this rather pretty "geologic formation" is more like a "sticker burr"? Yeee haw....

Historically, the first 24-48 hours of this whole process has generally kept me in bed on a heating pad and/or in bath water that is as hot as I can stand it, drinking as much water as I can stand, all in a rather futile effort to get some relief from the waves of pain and pass this spiked bowling ball out of my body as quickly as possible... And there within lies a little "problem" - I am due to pull out first thing on Sunday morning to head to Lynchburg... And I have a TON of stuff still to do in the next 2 days!!! This"beautiful" little object in the photo is suddenly REALLY complicating our trip to compete in the Jack... I have to be on the road by Sunday (it is a 25-26 hour drive) in order to meet the rest of the family when they fly into Nashville on Wednesday... There is a possibility it could cause me to have to miss the Jack all together...

Here comes another wave of pain, so I am closing this for now... So stay tuned, as this could get real interesting...