Dave Donaldson

My blog has been a bit dark the past few days because I've been battling a kidney stone. It started Monday night around 9:30 as I was just sitting on the couch watching TV when all of a sudden I was in serious pain. It was coming directly from my left kidney and was so bad my wife had to rush me to the emergency room. The ER was pretty busy, but luckily for me the staff realized how much pain I was in so I didn't have to wait too long to see a doctor. They knew it was a kidney stone pretty much right away and a catscan confirmed it. They doped me up and sent me home with more meds.

I slept through most of the next day, but later that night (Halloween of all nights), I found myself again in terrible pain, so much so that I couldn't go out trick-or-treating with my kids. I held out long enough for them to get all their candy and then my wife had to take me back to the ER. They doped me up again and I was sent back home.

Wednesday wasn't too bad a day and I made it to my appointment on Thursday with a urologist to discuss options, which were basically to try and let it pass by itself (which obviously wasn't happening) or to have a procedure to take it out. I opted for the latter option, which was performed yesterday.

It turns out that having the surgery was the best option because once the doctor got in there he saw that the kidney stone was bigger than they originally thought and it was lodged in a place where it was never going to pass on its own. He actually had to use a laser to break it apart just to remove the stone. Unfortunately, that also means my recovery time might be a couple more days than I had thought.

So I'll just be sitting here watching football, maybe do some blogging, maybe work on some CodeKeep updates, and maybe play some Xbox.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, this means I am *not* leaving for TechEd Europe today. That is a bummer, but at least I have about $1900 worth of plane tickets to use in the next 12 months.