KIDNEY STONES AND RUNNING

Well, bright and early Thursday morning found me at the OB's. Again. For some reason I keep getting what I thought were UTI's. I'd get over one just to turn around and have another the next day. What the? It was actually kind of starting to worry me a little. I mean, I haven't had problems like this since I was first married. But, when you have four UTI's in just two months, hmmmmm. So, I sat patiently in the nurses office waiting for the results to come back from the lab. Thursday was probably the worst one I've had in a really long time. I woke up at two in the morning in pain and couldn't go back to sleep. At that point, all I wanted were the meds to make it go away and the nice little sample pills they give you that calm everything down. After a while the nurse comes back in, sits down and proceeds to tell me that the UTI came back negative? WHAT? She also told me that the last couple had come back negative, but because of high levels of other things they put me on a round of meds. After looking over the results to show me which levels were high (don't worry, I won't go into too much detail!) she told me it looked like I had kidney stones. Um, can I have the UTI instead please? So, they put me on another round of meds and told me when it flares up again to give them a call so they can refer me to an urologist. She also told me if my back started to hurt (I've had a kidney infection before, so I know what that feels like. So not fun. Actually, probably one of the worst pains I've ever had in my life!) and my fever spikes to head to the nearest instacare immediately as I was most likely going to pass the stones and I would need pain meds asap. Nice. So, here I sit. On meds and waiting for my back to start hurting. But, I have to say, it is all my fault. I did a little research on kidney stones and found out dehydration is probably one of the biggest factors. I don't get enough water and am also a Red Bull junkie. Completely addicted to the stuff. Some people drink coffee in the morning for the caffeine hit. Me? It's Red Bull. Red Bull doesn't necessarily give you the kidney stones. It's the caffeine that wipes out the water in your body as caffeine is a diuretic which causes dehydration. So, I've officially been Red Bull and caffeine free for three days now. And, my head is REALLY feeling it. As you can imagine, right now I'm not such a happy camper and pretty grouchy. Hopefully the caffeine withdrawals will start to edge soon and I can go back to not cringing every time a child cries or the bubs turns up the radio to one of his favorite songs. Speaking of which, the second day of no caffeine he left me a new CD in the car to listen to on the way to work. Stone Sour. The same guy sings for Slipknot. Yeah, wasn't thrilled when I turned on the car and it freakin' BLARED through the speakers. I almost threw up right then. But, I do have to say, it's kind of a blessing in disguise. I knew I needed to get off the caffeine and that I was addicted to the Red Bull. I've tried to wean myself off other times but just went right back to drinking it. Now I can honestly say that I really don't have the desire for it, just for the caffeine. The lack of caffeine can also only be a helpful factor in the whole fertility scheme of things as too much caffeine can lead to infertility. I've also signed up for the full Ogden marathon in May of next year which means I have a little over six months to train. The bubs has graciously offered to run with me and help me train as my form is sadly lacking (his words, not mine!) I'm actually pretty excited about it. We're spending time together and exercising - it's a win, win. Maybe the whole kidney stone thing is what I needed to get my butt up and going!