Stoned

A small deposit of calcium can build up in your kidneys. Most of the time its too small for you to notice and you just viod it along with your urine or in the best case the calcium never builds up. If it does build up and then refuses to pass you are blessed with what is known as a renal calculi, a kidney stone in laymans terms. Picture trying to pass a three milimeter razor blade while urinating and you get a glimpse at the last month of my life.
I was driving to paramedic school when I noticed a slight twinge of pain in my back, just to the left of my spine. Within five minutes I was pulled over to the side of the road, vomitting and shivering from pain in the freezing January mist. Me, being the hard ass (or is it hard head?) that I am, I drove to school and tried to stay for class. My instructor, a Boston EMS paramedic with centuries of experience told me either my buddies could take me to the emergecny room or Taunton's 911 AMR truck would do the honors. Grudgingly I agreed and after a battery of tests and several pwerful doses of dialutid, a narcotic analgesic I was released and sat for the rest of our cardiology lecture.
And so began the month from hell. Cardiology is when everything in paramedic comes together. All of the drugs we had learned about were starting to make sense because we were able to understand what they are doign and why the are doing it. Needless to say this is a very important section of medic, certainly not one an aspiring medic should miss. So one can understand why I was less than thrilled to hear that I would need to see a urologist and even more pissed off when said urologist told me he wanted to wait a month before doing anything with my stone.
A month of god awful pain passed before I decided to admit myself to Rhode Island Hospital and have the specialists go in and scoop out my little diamond.
As soon as I was discharged I had to take my paramedic mid term. I had to take a test based on an entire semester's worth of knowlege, while still under the effects of painkillers as my urinary tract was totally and painfully inflamed. Despite all that I managed to start IVs on dummies, entubate the dummies and recognize the squiggly lines of EKGs for emergency treatment. I scored a 97.5 on my mid term practical and a 90 on the written which to me was astounding.
I had been at about a level four out of ten pain consistently for a month, durring that time I developed an understanding of how prisoners of war can be tortured into insanity.
Now comes the recovery, I have started going back to the gym, my previous gym addiction ahd to be placed on hold as the pain was so bad. I am in the home stretch of paramedic with the end date of May 18 in sight and my clincal hours (400 total) are being whittled away with militaristic discpline to a 30 hour a week schedule composed of ten hour days.
Overall I miss being a firefighter very much, while I certainly enjoy the medical aspect of my job, I long to be sweating my ass off, crawling along the floor under a pall of heavy, oily smoke. To that end I have various applications in with multiple departments and I am trying to secure part time work at my ala matta Holden Fire Rescue in Holden, MA. Untill then I work as a paramedic intern and an EMT Intermediate for an ambulance. Soon has gone from the abstract future of college days to a tangible reality within sight.