Size 6 to 4 Can Be Painful

Growing up I had always been told not to eat a lot of salt. Mom never got too specific, she just said "that's enough." Maybe I had heard it wasn't good for the heart, and then later I think I was told it causes high blood pressure. Well just last week I heard a new thing that salt might cause, kidney stones. My sister decided, after much loving guidance from myself, to go on the Jenny Craig diet. For those of you who aren't familiar with the diet, essentially you weigh yourself, give the contents of your wallet to Jenny, weigh yourself again, and magically your lighter. Depending of course on how much money you had to begin with in your wallet. So that money buys you prepared Jenny meals. And these meals are high in sodium. They aren't the highest ones out there, but they're still not healthy in that department. And my sister had been eating them every day every meal of the day for several months.

Then she started noticing some problems when she needed to use the bathroom. Since I only like to embarass her in person I'll skip the details. At one point things were so messed up down there that she felt it would be prudent to see a doctor. This decision of hers was suggested to her by the worst pain she ever felt in her life at 4 in the morning.

The doctor found she had kidney stones and E coli. A few months went by and nothing really changed. And now we come to the present. After going back to the doctor, she was told the likely cause of her kidney stones was all the Jenny meals. The doctor was actually quite impressed. He said typically he only sees old people who have kidney stones, and it's usually like 1 or 2. She has 4! One of which that was rather large and was causing most of her problems down there.

Today she went into surgery to get the big one removed. The doctor said it was completely embedded in her urethra, and there was no way it was coming out on its own. So he broke it apart and got the big chunks out. The remaining 3 are still in there and hopefully they'll come out on there own.

Fortunately today's surgery went well, and the doctor didn't have to make any new holes in her to get to the kidney stones. The ones God gave her worked just fine. Apparently she's in some serious pain, but Mom's there doing her thing.