I knew it was going to be a bad day when I nearly passed out during my morning shower from dizziness and nausea.

I've never passed out from anything; it's a by-product of the tame, boring life I lead. Not that I'd like to.

While not feeling great, I figured it was stomach distress, nothing that wouldn't pass with a little rest and sleep. I took my wife to her doctor's appointment, where while she was being checked up on, I was making repeated toilet trips because it felt like I had to go, even though I couldn't.

OK, maybe constipation? Never had it really, certainly not nausea inducing, but stress can to lots of things to a person. Not really anything to worry about, I thought. Just take some stomach stuff and maybe some laxatives when I get home.

After the appointment while driving home, I started to think, maybe this isn't constipation.

I felt like someone was simultaneously kicking me in the groin and stabing me in the back left side at the same time at a constant, increasing level. By the time I got home, I could barely lay down, because no position was comfortable.

Inexplicably, I still considered that this was going to pass on its own.

But by an hour later, I thought I was going to die, and a half hour after that, I wished I would.

I have never experienced physical pain like that. My whole left side from just below the lungs down to my groin, was in the most excrutiating pain I have ever had. It made violent food poisioning, flus, wisdom teeth removal, or anything else I've ever been through nothing.

My wife said, "We're going to the emergency room."

Urgent care had a waiting list of 11 people, some of which had been there for 3 hours. I went in after about 3 minutes. I could barely speak, and was weeping openly. No time for false heroics or stoicism. I managed to explain enough of where things hurt, and they moved me to the ER immediately.

The ER was so packed, not only was there no open beds, there were no seats, and people were in the hallways. While I got into a dressing gown and tried to give a urine sample, a nurse finally found an open seat behind a file cabinet for me. After failing to produce, they decided to run an IV and give me some pain medication.

It took them a while to find a vein for the IV and to draw blood. I've got the purple and black bruises to show for it. They said I had the veins of a 90-year old man. Well, I feel like a 90-year old man, that's for sure.

Once they got the blood, and shot me up with painkillers, then it was time to wait for a free doctor. It took about an hour or two. The ER was very busy.

Bed "S" had a drug user picked up and brought in by the cops for being unconscious in the street. While there, he tried to shoot up with PCP and the nurses caught him with a needle in his arm. He had to be restrained by security. He insisted he was fine, and didn't know why he was there.

Bed "P" had a GSW (gunshot wound), just a kid, shot in the leg. He just had got the bed after sitting in a wheelchair with his leg up for 3 hours, waiting. Blood was all over his legs and his Lakers shorts. At one point they called in maintenance to wipe up some of the blood off the floor.

"O" was a morbidly obese woman, with her oxygen tanks, in for some reason I never heard exactly. I suspected, fat, old and didn't take care of herself. She complained the whole time, tried to get out of bed on multiple occasions, asked for a table to put her stuff on, called for the nurse at every opportunity, and generally tried to make the staff's lives miserable with her selfishness.

Across the hall way in another bed, an over 90-year old woman was fighting with staff and trying to hit them. She had to be restrained as well. While this was going on, she sang old black spiritual music at the top of her lungs. "O' Lord, would you take me now?" Echoed throughout the ER, and if volume and intensity were a sign of health, she was better and would last longer than any of us.

Once the drugs kicked in, things were much better. I didn't even mind all the prodding with needles for additional blood samples, since somehow the first batch were contaminated before examination. The could stick me over and over. It still didn't hurt as much as my body did.

Eventually, the doctor saw me, taking me to a room in the ER for children, since it was the only open place with anything to block out the rest of the ER, even for a moment. We went over symptoms, he did a phyiscal exam of me, and said, "I think it's kidney stones."

Wow, didn't expect that. Didn't even consider that. Made sense though.

He decided on a CT scan to be sure. So more waiting, as they couldn't get a wheelchair to take me over, and I wasn't allowed to walk on my own.

Meanwhile, they pulled a wheelchair bound guy next to me. He fell off a truck and onto a lift-gate while working on a TV show, probably breaking his leg. He had been there for 5 hours waiting for a doctor and a bed. He said this was good research for a show he'd be working on in a couple of months.

Just outside us, someone had been brought in for nausea. He was laying in the hallway, wretching, asking for help. Sheesh, I wished I just had nausea. Though with the drugs, I didn't care.

I was finally able to give a urine sample after enough IV, and the nurse said "Whoo-whee that's a lot of blood in there." I wouldn't have expected a nurse to say that in front of me. Oddly, it was comforting, as if it was enough to comment on, but not bad enough to not comment on. Little did I know that sometime during then, I must have passed the stone, since they never found the left one. I know it wasn't in the sample though.

They found a wheelchair, and took me to the CT scanner. It was in a trailer outside the hospital. Looked very new, and the nurse commented on how other hospitals used it for certain studies because of it's quality. Sounded good to me.

Inside was a wallpaper mural of a mountainscape, and tissue paper clouds covered some of the flourescent lighting. The lights flickered and buzzed, like tiny fireflies were inside them.

I laid down on the scanner, and followed the automatic instructions of the machine: "Breathe in", "Hold", "Breathe" as it moved me in and out of the scanner a few times. It took longer to get me hoisted into the trailer and out than the actual scan. On the way down, she showed me some of the scan, and I could see my spine, lungs, liver, kidneys, pelvis. Couldn't see any stones, but then I'm not a doctor.

Then back to the ER for more waiting, and more blood samples.

A kid was a few chairs away from me who had fallen out a second story window onto his face. He seemed fine except for some scratches and bumps.

Another patient forgot to take some of his medicines, and therefore had to be admitted. It seemed unfathomable to me that you'd let yourself go like that to the point where you had to go through this, at the ER, especially with true emergencies going on. Heck, if I had known kidney stones, I might not have even gone to urgent care. Though I'm glad I did.

The doctor said the blood tests were late due to the amount of people in ER, and he'd know soon whether he could release me. They said the stone had passed, they could see the damage it had caused, but no stone on that side. They'd give me a copy of the lab reports to take to my primary doctor who could refer me to a urologist.

More waiting for blood test results, then they let me go, a whole day blown away in the ER.

I asked if this could happen again, and the doctor said, "Certainly. There are more stones in there, waiting."

Waiting.

I tried to sleep without moving, as if moving would dislodge another one.

Waiting.

Great.