This too shall pass...

Last Sunday started as a normal Sunday. We woke up, enjoyed the quiet morning and casually got ready for Church. Even the time at church was quite normal. It wasn't until we returned home and had lunch that the day was ruined. At about 3:30 I started to notice a weird pain on the right side of my back. At first I thought that it was just a weird cramp, but thirty minutes later it hurt so much that I had to lay down. For the next several hours I was in more pain than I have ever felt in my life. It was so bad that as I was wincing and trying to bear it, I was also trying to come up with some way to express the pain to somebody else. This is what I came up with: It felt like painful unpassable gas mixed with a cramping muscle and an enduring feeling of being kicked between the legs. Yes, it was that bad. Finally at about 8 o'clock Laura looked up an urgent care facility and drove me to see a doctor. Long story short, I was experiencing my first kidney stone. I asked the doctor how long this sort of thing can take and he told me that it can last for up to a week. I am grateful that mine passed early the next day (less than 24 hours later). It is truly incredible that such a little thing can cause such a tremendous amount of pain.