These past few comics have been unbelievably painful for me to read.

In fact, the first comic starring the urethra weasels had me staring at it every few hours shocked and appallingly intrigued by the visceral response that it inspired in me.

This is my one year anniversary of surviving an 8 mm kidney stone and having a laser shoved up my urethra to blast it into pieces.

I still vividly remember standing in the shower trying to pull a stent out of my kidneys and through the most tender of regions.

All I can say is ouch, damn you Jon, and can I get a shirt with the urethra weasels on them?

My kidney stone was only the third most painful experience of my life. Second involved waking up during surgery.

First is none a' yer dam' bidness.

Second involved waking up during surgery.

I didn't mind that when it happened to me - but I have made a note to remind nurses about my obsence tolerance for Demerol from now on.

The needle biopsy of my liver, on the other hand...

I'm gonna go with my own kidney stone issues here. Passed a relatively small one I guess (not that it was fun, mind you), but the nice ER folks took a scan and told me to call the Urologist. ASAP.

Resident comes in, introduces himself, pops up the scans that were sent over from the ER, and goes kinda pale and sweaty. Apparently that pain in my lower back wasn't actually my back, it was a stone about the size of a walnut. Shell and all.

After a couple of sonic blastings and living with a stent in for a few months, I ended up face down on a gurney, numbed but awake, while a Radiologist punched a hole through my back into my kidney and ran a tube and guide wires through that hole, into the kidney, and then on down into my bladder. Fortunately after about an hour of the worst 'I have to pee so bad' pain from the wires in my bladder, I was finally knocked out, and the Doc went in and broke up most of 'Phobos', as I had taken to calling it, and vacuumed it out through the hole for a few hours.

About a week later the tubing was yanked out of my back. I screamed, the Doc ordered a pain shot, and the Head Nurse suggested next time we do those two in the other order.

I'll leave the joys of catheter and stent removal (especially ones that have been in long enough to 'stick') for the imagination.

Next time I may just go drink heavily in a seedy part of town and see if they'll steal my kidney...

This thread reminds me -- I really need to start exercising, eating better, and taking my multivitamins.

So, you see..
What they do with a needle biopsy of the liver is...

They stick a needle into your liver.

From the outside.

And since it's your liver they want to look at, and it's your liver that does a lot of the processing to remove things like pain killers...

They can't give you pain killers. Except a bit of local on the skin, so they can make a small incision through that, so they have a better shot through your rib cage.

With the needle.

Geez, I ask the whole pub why everybody's livers and kidneys are failing.

I ask the whole pub why everybody's livers and kidneys are failing. Someone had to go there.

I think that means you have to buy the next round.

Damn... They really didn't like you.

It hurt to read this conversation.