Oh, Darn It

     Seems I'm sick again.

     Off to the doc.

     Update: Because of both the hour and my symptoms, "doc" was the closest ER.   The diagnosis was not what I expected and, in fact, the personable young physician said, "You nearly fooled me; the symptoms matched but you were much too calm."

     Apparently, most people with kidney stones don't drive themselves -- and they usually demand and are put on IV pain meds early and often.

     Hunh,  And he'd even asked me about the "trigeminal neuralgia" that pops up at the head of my electronic file, which is fancied-up doc-speak for what I prefer to call migraines.  In fact, I hadn't taken any ibuprofen this morning, in case my innards were already working overtime, and the throbbing in my head was duking it out with the fires down below and making a pretty good showing.

     Unlike several characters in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle,* I am not going to undergo lithotomy -- just a course of medication designed to dilate the channels, along with powerful modern painkillers and -- by the physician's command -- plenty of good old Vitamin I. 

     This, too, shall pass.  It had damned well better.
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* Utterly brilliant historical-fiction SF that out-steampunks steampunk seven ways from Sunday.  I already liked Stephenson -- Cryptonomicon settled that -- but this three-volume, eight-book story made me a total fangirl.