Last night I started feeling a little pain in my back. In itself, this isn’t an unusual thing: I have a protruding disc in the left side of my lower back, which isn’t a huge deal, though every couple of months I’ll have a day that I’ll have to just lie down and not really move at all. Days like that make me happy to have a notebook computer.

The strange thing about this pain was that it was coming from the right side rather than the left, like it ordinarily comes from. I didn’t think too much of it (other than “The right side of my back isn’t about to go out too, is it??”), but when I woke up this morning, I had a similar feeling — it felt like muscle cramps — but now it had moved around to the front.

I figured I should call my doctor, and based on my description he guessed that it was a kidney stone and wanted me to come in for an x-ray. I sent a few emails trying to cover what I would have been doing at work today and telling them that I wouldn’t be in until later, if at all.

Halfway to the doctor’s office, the pain became so unbearable that Annette and I decided she should take me to the emergency room rather than my regular doctor.

It’s a strange feeling, experiencing the worst pain one has ever felt in his life and wanting more than anything to just lie down, but being stuck as a passenger in a car on a freeway in morning work traffic. It’s isolating and makes you feel helpless as the world moves on around you oblivious.

I signed into the emergency room and, as soon as the nurse was done taking my blood pressure, I laid down on the floor, despite the nurse’s protestations, as she asked me for my social security number and insurance information.

A couple of tests, an MRI, and copious amounts of morphine later, the kidney stone hypothesis was confirmed, so here I am at home… waiting. Waiting, taking vicodin, drinking gallons of water, and bored out of my mind.

At least I don’t have to go to work for the rest of the week, though what I should be doing (learning Calculus in preparation for my Calculus II class that starts in a couple of weeks) has proven difficult to do so far due to distraction. Perhaps I’ll write some more on my unfortunately-neglected-of-late wordparts.