We spent Christmas Day 2011 in the hospital with our youngest son. The ordeal started out with excruciating pain. When M pointed out where his pain was coming from, I had a bad feeling it would be kidney stones. I knew. Because years ago, I also had the same pain. In that same area. I felt so helpless seeing him writhing in pain in the emergency room, knowing exactly what kind of pain he was going through. I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy.
Hospital personnel who attended to my son often had the same reaction upon finding out he was just a teen. “Ang bata pa!” (“So young!”). And I would agree because during my time, only people past their prime and approaching senior years were diagnosed with kidney stones.
To make the long story short, M had a stent placed inside him for months. His physical activities in school were cut down to barest minimum. We had to finish his graduation and summer classes before going for a procedure called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL) which used sound waves to blast the stones lodged in his ureter. A month later, he underwent another ESWL – this time to target the 2 stones in his kidney.
