Hey everyone!
How is Tom? Tom will live.
To tell the story, the pain that I got a half hour into my show two weeks ago was a kidney stone. I sat still for an hour, played Miles Davis, rode out the pain enough to do 90 minutes of call-ins. But I left the station in pain and made my way to the ER a couple hours later. They CAT scanned me and spotted a 6 mm kidney stone. A urologist that I saw a day later told me that I should try to ride it out.
For the next week I experienced sharp bouts of pain and a general queasiness. The kidney stone felt like it stopped halfway down on its journey out of my body, so I went back to the urologist, who said we had to get it out the next day via a surgical procedure that I never want to think about again.
I went in, got it done, it went well - they showed Jillian Barberie the offending stone while I was still knocked out, and she said it resembled a small guitar pick, with all it's pointy ends. I then went home that night, but had to go back to the hospital a few hours later because it the pain was off the charts bad - just insane kidney and bladder spasms. On the bright side, I now can say what the worst pain I've ever felt in my life is. It was like getting stabbed from the inside out.
I went back to the ER and promptly got hooked up to an IV where they gave me something that took me to Jupiter. I got another CAT scan, where they determined that I had ANOTHER kidney stone! They kept me in the hospital and I was ready to go back into the OR the following day. Thankfully my urologist showed up and said that it wasn't another kidney stone - whew! It was only 10 millimeters of clotted blood that I had to pass on my own. Whee!
So for the last two days I've been home, drugged up, feeling slightly better but still a ways away. I won't be doing my show this Tuesday because I've got more recovering to do and a doctor's appointment the following morning.
Thanks to everybody who sent their wishes, thoughts and prayers my way. It truly did help - I was thinking about all of that stuff when I was on the table waiting to get brought in. You guys are the best.
So it comes down to The Kid versus The Kidney Stone, and while the Kidney Stone may have the lead right now, but The Kid will come out on top!
Thanks again everyone.
Tom.