If you think that's bad, wait till you get this

Sorry, but this week you will have to bear with me while Old Joe harps about his aches and pains.

By the way, Old Joe is my alter-ego who is facing the aging process with a good bit of anger and resentment. Real Joe, on the other hand, has been blessed with good health all his life. The two Joes don't always see eye to eye.

There you go. There's a perfect example. Old Joe has cataracts. His eye doctor told him a couple of months ago that it was time for surgery. Old Joe said he would wait awhile, what with the Big Move on the horizon.

Real Joe, on the other hand, really isn't ready for eye surgery. There are many, many reasons. One is I can't stand to let anyone near my eyes. And eye drops? No way. Another reason is because I can still see pretty well. I passed the eye exam to renew my driver's license in August. Barely. But I passed. Sure, reading small print is impossible. Sometimes even good-sized print blurs or doubles up. But can any doctor guarantee my vision will be better after surgery? No. They all make you sign all kinds of waivers, just in case they accidentally poke you in the eye.

Speaking of which: On Day One of my retirement (this was five years ago), I decided to use my time to do some yard work. I was raking leaves under a large lilac bush, and my shoulder must have pushed one of the lilac's springy limbs off to the side. The next thing I know I'm on the ground with an intense pain in my eye, and I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, no. I've been retired one day and I've already poked my eye out."

I wound up in the emergency room the next day. The doctor said I had scratched the cornea of my eye and that it would take a few days to heal. She said she would put pain-relieving drops in my injured eye. I gave her a look with my good eye that said everything. "Don't like anybody messing with your eyes, do you?" the doctor said. I shook my head. She then showed me a technique for getting the drops in my eye with my eye closed. It worked. I now consider that doctor a true miracle worker.

The reason you're having to put up with all this wailing and whining is the same reason you almost didn't have a new column to read this week. That's because I woke up Saturday morning with intense pain in my lower back. I got up, got dressed and ate a bowl of cereal. By the time the cereal was gone, the pain had localized into something all too familiar: a gall bladder attack. I had one of those a few years ago. But I had my gall bladder removed. How could I be having another attack? Besides, this pain was in my lower back, not my abdomen. What's going on?

That's when my mind sifted through all those medical TV shows I've watched. Surely one of them had diagnosed my condition and could offer relief.

It didn't take long for the answer to pop up: kidney stones. Uh-oh. I knew what gallstones are like (bad), but I had been told that kidney stones are even worse. Sure enough, I can now assure you that kidney stones are worse than gallstones.

So off to the ER I went. The competent staff quickly agreed with my self-diagnosis and started an IV full of anti-nausea medication and a painkiller. When I asked about the painkiller, the nurse said what it was, but in my agony I couldn't make it out. "It's 10 times stronger than morphine," he said.

Double the dose, I said.

After a scan of my abdomen and lower back, we had proof of the stones. Three of them. The doctor said he had been practicing medicine 25 years but this was the first time he had ever seen three stones at one time. Lucky me.

Finally, a third medication was added to the cocktail flowing into my veins, and all the pain went away. I was sent home with four prescriptions to manage the pain while the stones passed through my system. Now there's something to look forward to.

One of the prescriptions is for OxyContin (Oxycodone). That's a drug I've heard about, usually being misused by people who should know better. I wondered if I could get addicted before the kidney stones passed. For two days I didn't care a whit about narcotic addiction. I would have taken just about anything you put in front of me, if you promised it would help.

By noon Tuesday, it appears all the stones had either dissolved or passed through my system. I felt well enough to eat. I stopped taking the OxyContin. Wednesday morning switched to acetaminophen to help with soreness in my lower back. It seems to be working.

Therefore, dear readers, I am, as they say, sitting up and taking nourishment. And writing a column dumping all my ailments on you. Sorry about that. I know many of you have had worse attacks of kidney stones and other ailments that make stones seem like chigger bites.

But this is what you get, thanks to modern medicine.

Thank God for modern medicine.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.