It really started Friday morning when I woke up to the symptoms of hydronephrosis.  This is (basically) a backup of urine in the kidney.  It is painful and can be dangerous if untreated.  This is not the first time I’ve had it, and probably won’t be the last…so I got up determined to tough it out and see how things went during the day.  I wasn’t thinking about the fact that it was Friday and if it didn’t resolve by the next morning I’d have no option other than the ER!

By lunchtime I was in significant pain both from the hydronephrosis and what seemed to be a large kidney stone that was moving, so I took some pain meds.  (Yes, they’re safe during pregnancy!)  They made me sleepy so I laid down in the bed with a moist heating pad for the back/side pain (also safe for pregnancy) but couldn’t sleep because I was just hurting too badly.  I was able to relax a bit more with the edge taken off, though!  After a while, I started feeling a pain that was unmistakably the kidney stone dropping quickly.  I cannot explain how I knew this…but if you’ve ever felt it you know what I mean!  In between “slides” I actually felt quite a bit better so I decided to get up and move into my office and spend some time on the computer.  I felt it drop some more and then felt a “ping” in my bladder followed by the *very* urgent need to empty it.  Sure enough, the blockage was relieved and I had a nice, perfectly round 5.5 mm kidney stone to show for it.  The hydronephrosis was resolved by the evening and despite some more mild kidney stone type pain I was feeling pretty good.

Then Saturday morning I passed some more.  And have continued to pass bits and pieces (though none of them anywhere near as large!) every day since.  Maybe my kidneys are flushing themselves out really well?  I don’t know, but it’s nice to be passing them without needing a cystoscopy, a stent, or lithotripsy!

Then Saturday we went to ARTober Fest downtown and enjoyed lunch at La Dolce Vita which has the BEST pizza in town!  I spent some time talking to Amy and we also bought some chocolate treats from her.  (Those chocograhams are the BOMB!)  It was very chilly out though and I was completely unprepared.  Must remember that the weather now requires socks…

Then yesterday I overslept so we planned on going to the 2nd service at church.  Until I found out about the Barack Obama rally in Fayetteville!  We debated on it for a little while and decided to go to church anyway then head straight down there.  I doubted that there would be a lot of supporters and figured we could get there right at the time the rally was supposed to start and we’d still be OK.  Well, we made it to church and the service was a little long.  (But good!)  So we grabbed the kids from their respective rooms and hopped in the old minivan and headed down to the Crown Coliseum.  We had to drive through McD’s on the way so nobody would starve (um, namely the pregnant woman) and made it to the Coliseum area right at 1:30.  And saw cars parked EVERYWHERE and people *leaving* already.  What the heck?  So we pulled over and asked someone…it turned out he was already speaking and they’d started turning people away an HOUR before.  There were over 10k people inside and several thousand more outside we heard later.  We used to live in F’ville not far from the Crown Coliseum and I had never seen it packed like that.  Truly, truly amazing!

My 6 year old’s heart was broken.  He cried like he lost his best friend and I felt SO bad for getting him excited.  We don’t speak much about our political leanings in front of him and he actually told me he was going to vote for McCain a week or two ago (some of my conservative family members must have been talking to him or something!) so I’m honestly not sure why he was so upset.  I promised him that if Barack came back to North Carolina between now and November 4 we’d make every effort to see him, even if it was a school day.  He was somewhat calmed by that until he remembered the pizza party he’d miss out on at school if he missed a day.  *sigh*  I can’t win for losing.

I needed to get out and walk around, so we headed to Cross Creek Mall to walk a bit before heading back to good old Sanford.  I hadn’t been there since we moved away from the area way back in 2004 and it hasn’t gotten any better.  YUCK.  I am *so* glad we got out!

Needless to say, it was a looooooooooong and exhausting weekend.  And tomorrow is a big day for me, so I should get some rest tonight!  It doesn’t look promising as both kids are still very much awake and I still need to sort through the clothes I’m taking to the consignment shop tomorrow.  A mother’s work is never done.  (And yet, you see what I’m doing…am I putting kids to bed or resting or sorting clothes?  Um, no.)