A Return Trip to the Emergency Room in Guimaras, the Philippines: Part Two

I was sitting in the emergency room at our provincial hospital in Guimaras, where my asawa had accompanied me on a return trip to determine the severe pain I was experiencing. From past experience, I had no doubt that it was another kidney stone attack, as I had suffered one four years ago. Many people that have kidney stones have a recurrence of them within seven years unless they take preventive actions. I didn’t.  A lack of drinking water every day and excessive sweating, which I do a lot of in this tropical climate in the Philippines, surely contributed to this recent attack.

A kidney stone is a hard, crystalline mineral material formed within the kidney or urinary tract.  Symptoms of a kidney stone include flank pain (which can be quite severe) and blood in the urine.  I had no blood in my urine but I was suffering from extreme pain on my right side.

The emergency room was packed out that Sunday night. There were three nurses and one doctor on duty, as far as I could determine. My wife informed me that it would be quite a while before the physician could attend to me. I told my asawa that I hope it’s not a long wait because the pain was becoming unbearable. My asawa was told that I could not receive any pain medication until my urine test was finished. I had only deposited enough pee to satisfy a  duwende with Primordial dwarfism.

The young doctor on duty came over to my bed about 40 minutes after we arrived. He had a nurse inject me with a pain killer through a small tube stuck in my right wrist though the results from my urine test had not come back yet. I had already vomited three times and was weakening by the moment. Plus, I was groaning intermittently from the pain like a sissy baby, though I didn’t cry.

The doctor told my wife that he thought the beans I had eaten that night was causing the pain. I knew differently. I had no doubt it was kidney stones. Beans give me gas, ask my wife. They don’t give me pain.

A nurse came in to take my blood. I advised her that at Great Saviour’s Hospital in Iloilo the techs and the doctor there were unsuccessful in drawing blood from me four years ago; I had been stuck five times there.  The nurse got my blood on the second try, but it was very painful.

After 30 minutes the pain medication kicked in. We had arrived around 8′:30 am and I was able to sleep for an hour or so. My poor distraught wife sat on the hospital bed beside me.

The doctor came back around midnight and told my wife and I that the blood test did indeed reveal I had kidney stones. He gave us a prescription for pain medication and advised us we would have to go to an outside facility for an ultrasound. He told us to come back to the Outpatient Department when we had the ultrasound results.

My wife bought the pain medication at the hospital pharmacy and we left the hospital around 12:30 pm. There were no tricycles and it was a 35 minute walk home. Save for some off-key wailing from a local karaoke bar, the town was quiet. Imagine Mayberry back in the Sixties and you get an idea what San Miguel, Jordan, Guimaras, where we live, is like. Even Barney Fife would be bored here.

We went for an ultrasound the next day, Monday, in Guimaras, but the doctor from Iloilo would not be in until Tuesday. Thankfully, Monday was a relatively pain-free day but Tuesday was a different story. I had severe flank pain again but was still able to make the ultrasound appointment Tuesday afternoon.

The doctor who performed my ultrasound informed me I had six small kidney stones the size of a grain of sand in my right kidney. I had one six millimeter stone in my left kidney. It looked like the stones would be able to be shrunk by medication.

His last bit of information distressed me as he told me I had an enlarged prostate. The normal prostate weights 25 grams, mine weighed 38. I knew absolutely nothing about the prostate and my wife’s eyes filled with tears. She feared the worst and the only thing that came to our minds was prostate cancer. The day had turned even darker.

TO BE CONTINUED