I’ve been having a hard time today. I woke up after 9.5 hours sleeping (yeah for sleep!) with severe pain in my hands and feet. When I finally convinced myself to stand up, it felt like standing on needles that were poking through the bottoms of my feet. I was moving in slow motion, but I did get myself dressed, showered and out the door to do a quick shopping trip with my mother.
While we were standing in line, I got a sharp, intense pain in my lower abdomen. I couldn’t figure out what it was: bowel discomfort or the fabled kidney stone finally starting the second half of it’s painful journey. I moved us along a little and didn’t complain until we were almost home. I know it breaks my mother’s heart when she knows I hurt.
I spent the next two hours sleeping with a heating pad. Woke up, peed, drank water and slept for another hour with the heating pad. It didn’t reduce the pain level but was comforting nonetheless. For the last hour, I haven’t been able to sleep anymore, yet I’m driven to distraction by the intensity of the pain. It is slightly to the left of center and very, very low down.
The kidney stone first appeared on December 28th at 4am. I went to the hospital with vomiting and abdominal pain like I’d never felt before (10 out of 10, so bad that I couldn’t cry) at 7am. I was back at my sister’s house by 1pm and in bed for the rest of the day. In the evening I managed to eat and be around people for a while.
The next day, I looked up kidney stones and the various drugs I’ve been on. I’ve never had them before, but the CT scan showed I had 2, one on each side. The one that I felt was just under the size where the medical system intervenes. The doctor told me that I would feel it when it left and that I should catch it in the strainer she provided to analyze it’s composition. Still waiting for it to come out… Anyway, I found the prescribing information from Rocephin on a Canadian website that differed from the US prescribing info. The former says that Rocephin (the IV antibiotic that got me walking and typing again) causes kidney stones. The latter only mentions “renal precipitation,” whatever that is. I still have no regrets for having taken it.
Besides the abdominal pain, today I’ve got pain in my hips, more so in the left side, and a headache that comes and goes from different parts of my skull. When I was standing in the store today, I noticed all those floaters in my eyes. It must have been the fluorescent lighting because the went away when I looked at the floor. Looking straight ahead, it was like little raindrops blurring my vision in many small spots and drifting slightly. Very disconcerting.
All in all, a very painful day, but I think it’s the illness, not the Herx. I’m monitoring my urine (for the kidney stone) and learning once again that when I detox, it is darker, cloudier and has a different smell than usual (i.e., usually no discernible smell).
I’m going to wait until some of this abdominal pain clears up before I use the coil machine again.
Categories: Herx reactions, pharmaceutical treatments
Tags: kidney stones, symptoms
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Coiling for Lyme 