Sigh. No, really, SIGH.

Well, welcome to week 3 of KIDNEY STONE 2006, the Magical Mystery Tour.

It's not out yet and after battling an infection/fever last week in which I felt like recycled shit, I'm doing much better this week. Save for the fact, my kidney stone is still in there. I'm actually in no pain this week, which is good for me personally, but I fear the stone is just stuck now, not moving - as moving seems to be painful - and you know what that means:

MEDICAL INTERVENTION!

I have a bad feeling that in 2-3 weeks, I'm going to have a catheter up my hoo-haa, poking around up there, trying to find the darn thing to pull it out. I don't think they can do the procedure where they smash the stone to tiny little bits with sonic waves (if Tom Cruise is unavailable to shoot his mind-beams at it) because it's now in my groin, nowhere near my kidney, where I've read they use the sonic wave thingie procedure most often. No, I think there's going to be a probe, a camera and some sort of claw-attachment to go in and retreive this puppy.

And this doesn't make me happy, except for the prospect of the stone actually being out. This thing is a life-changer. I haven't had a cup of coffee now going on 3 weeks. My appetite is nil, although I do get hungry, I just couldn't give a flying fuck about food. I maybe eat 1/2 of what I used to. So, I think I've lost 5-10 pounds so far on the kidney stone diet, which, while effective, I do not recommend. I think I worked a grand total of 18 hours the last two weeks - which is bad if you're a contractor like me. Sure, it's just a little stone rattlin' around your pee-tubes, but it makes you feel like death warmed over, even if you're not in a lot of pain. It just sort of drains your life-force.

But I'm so much better this week. Life is livable again and I'm back in the office. I did, however, have a personal moment of shame last week.

So, I had to go in for a drug screen because I'm coming on board full-time next week. Hey, I've peed into a cup 2 times in 1 week, I got this thing covered, right? I'm a pro!

Not so fast. I think I dribbled out like 2 teaspoons worth of urine, like I'm some sort of starving kid out of the Sudan. I shamefully handed my very small sample to the nurse at the drug-screening place and told her that I'm usually a pro at this and related my kidney stone and peeing in a cup experiences. She seemed unimpressed but somewhat sympathetic to my pee-in-a-cup issue.

Now the drug-screener is calling me because they found - dun DUN DUUUNNNNN - darvocet in my sample. So I'm on the phone all offended: "I'm on Vicodin! I haven't used the darvocet in over a week. You guys didn't find Vicodin in my sample?" Apparently, they don't test for the hard stuff, just the wussy stuff that hardly takes the edge off the pain. Hey, I'm a HARDCORE medical narcotics user, baby! You betta RECOGNIZE!

I'm really sick of having this stone in me, but at least it got me off the caffeine, which most likely was one of the contributing factors to it forming in the first place. I just don't understand how Starbucks is going to function without my steady source of cash. Now excuse me while I go make myself another cup of Celestial Seasonings decaff green tea. Ooooooooom.