This Too Shall Pass

PLUS

EQUALS =

KIDNEY STONE

Ever had one? Try to avoid it if at all possible.

I've had a few of them - just blessed with good genes, I guess - but they usually broke up and headed quietly for the exit on their own. Prior to that, of course, there's the excrutiating agony of the attack, which is probably not unlike that warm feeling one got from instruments of torture in the Inquisition.

This one, however, has been hanging on like an unwanted relative. For months. Yes, months....That initial searing pain has long passed but not the stone, which has made itself at home somewhere at the bottom of my bladder. So I'm told. All I know is that I'm uncomfortable all the time and have to pee 4 times a night. And I'm not even pregnant.

They tried to blast the little bugger with sonar waves or somesuch but it just wasn't working. Too easy, of course. So now what's left? Let's revisit those instruments of torture. Without being too graphic, something's gotta to travel up where stuff usually comes down. It's like salmon swimming upstream; it's just not the right direction!

I take the x-rays in for a consult with Herr Urologist today. He'll deliver the verdict, but I think he's just waiting to give me the hook, as they say. The fish hook.

Pray for me...