dude seriously?

Hey everyone.
 I know I have been absent as of late and really I could come up with a zillion excuses. But I hope you will feel sufficed with two. As most of you know I work shift work at a dispatching center for a police agency. I work nights and sometimes I bite off more than I can chew with our abundance of overtime. Now pair that with the arrival of a brand new computer system. They are giving us 4 days (32 hours) to learn how to work the system which is extremely different from the one we are currently on, and then we will be going live with it on the fifth day. I missed the first day of training due to reason #2 and on the first day of launch I will be working the busiest of the positions in the center for 14 hours straight. I am a sweet little ball of nerves and caffeine and bad decisions over here.
Which conveniently brings me to excuse au deux.
 I passed my first kidney stone on Sunday morning. Let me give you the run down on how this happened. Thursday morning I was working some OT, felt my back spasm so I did some yoga moves to stretch it out. I've never had back problems before so I figured I slept wrong. After a while the stretches weren't easing the discomfort and as I sat at my desk this giant charlie horse gripped my left flank and pulled me into the fetal position in what felt like a heartbeat. Anyway, I couldn't get out of the position, my manager and a SGT had to drive me to the ER and the nurses there loaded me up with some Morphine and explained that while I did have some stones (yes, plural) in my kidney they weren't moving so the doc wasn't able to pinpoint the reason for the sudden pain.
 The doc called it muscle spasms and sent me on my merry, doped-up way. Friday passes without incident. I sat at home doing nothing hoping for no more mishaps. Saturday dawns and I'm getting up. Getting a shower, slowly getting ready for work and I feel another spasm start. It's a slow rolling pain, similar to a contraction, but only on my left side. I eased myself into a hot shower while popping some Advil since I couldn't take a narcotic so close to my work start time. Stood in the screaming hot stream of water for about 30 minutes. Executed a few more yoga poses while in there, but nothing was really helping this discomfort.
 I got out of the shower and crawled back into bed. Figuring if I could relax and stay still I might still make it to my first day of training. Apparently that is when Fred, my stone, started his way to freedom and I felt a type of pain that I am unable to describe accurately. No amount of twisting and turning eased it. I curled up in the fetal again and called my mom. By this time I am crying uncontrollably, heaving sobbing, a type of cry I have never heard come out of my mouth. A guttural, primal thing that I would not be able to duplicate.
My mother understood enough of what I said to send my father over to ferry me to the ER for more tests. Now you know what's cool? My dad has passed about 60 stones in the last ten years. On average he has felt this pain once every two months for TEN YEARS. His super awesome body makes stones out of protein. Neat right? So he stepped right in and took over in his calm cool demeanor. I love my dad. He got me to the hosp where they set me up on Dilaudid immediately and discovered low and behold, Fred was missing from my kidney. The not so great news, Claribelle, is still there and she is bigger than her brother, according to the doc. So I can expect to go through all this again when Claribelle decides to run for the light.
It turns out, Fred or Claribelle had accidentally blocked my kidney exit on Thursday causing my kidney to enlarge but unless you compare one kidney to the other it's not necessarily noticeable and that is what was happening on Thursday.
So after another sweet dose of Dilaudid my wonderful mother whisked me away to get my meds. After a rather short jaunt down to the only Kaiser pharmacy that is open on the weekends, 42 miles away, I got home and crashed out for oh, 14 hours or so. And like a miracle Fred popped out the next morning. I want to keep him but my doc insists I turn him over for a round of tests. They want to find out what he is made of that I can change my diet and hope to avoid future incidents. As far as Claribelle is concerned, I would be content to have her stay in my kidney for the rest of our days.
So here I am. On day four of training. Hoping that by the end of this shift I will feel more at ease with our new system and secretly hoping Claribelle doesn't choose to come out anytime soon.
Those are my excuses for my lack of attention. I will come back soon with an update. But until then, remember to take time each day to smile and laugh, to soak up the sun and bask in the glory and beauty of nature, to thank our Maker for all the blessings He gives, big or small and to go easy on yourself. After all, you are only human.