An Answer At Last

Sick Teddy Bear
http://novelistabarista.blogspot.com/2010/10/sick.html
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I have not been feeling the best for about the last month or so, and today, I finally found out why.

My primary plans for Saturday (03/02/2013) were to get together for lunch with some friends who were in town from Madison, Wisconsin.  In spite of feeling a sharp pain on the right side of my lower torso when I woke up, I got ready and forged ahead with the twenty-mile drive to their hotel.  Along the way, I called my Mom, and she became convinced that I was having an appendicitis, one of the contributing factors to my grandfather's death in 1985.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632)
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
Image obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/....
Public Domain

I'm a guy though, and the well-documented code is that men don't give in to pain.  It wasn't an appendicitis anyway, right?  That was just my Mom being over-protective; however, as the destination drew nearer, I had  to let my Mom go, deny centuries of teachings regarding true masculinity, and call 911.  It was my intent to learn the location of the nearest hospital and drive there directly, but due to a combination of the dispatcher's encouragement and my own increasing discomfort - including breaking out into undershirt-drenching perspiration, I took the next exit and pulled into a hotel parking lot.  I called my Mom to let her know that she was right, of course, and my friends, to let them know  that our lunch would have to wait until another day.

Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CBE as Gandalf the Grey
The Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
http://marcelgomessweden.wordpress.com/....
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The next four hours involved meeting a variety of very wonderful and helpful people - EMT's, nurses, a doctor, CT scan technicians,  and a patient liaison.  Throughout that time, the pain ebbed and flowed... and then ebbed again, occasionally causing me to fear that everything was somehow just in my head.  I didn't want it to be something big, of course, but I did want it to be something.  The diagnosis?  I have a kidney stone, and the good news is that it is small enough for me to resolve it without the need for surgery.  Unlike the Balrog of Tolkien fame, it shall pass.

I want to thank one of my Mom's neighbors for getting me back home, as well as my sister, who (with the assistance of my brother-in-law's aunt and uncle) retrieved my car.

Sometimes, the greatest show of strength is to admit that one needs help, and although it took me a while to come to that conclusion today, I am glad to have so, as I now understand the reason behind some of my health issues over the last month.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to fulfill plans so much so that you attempted to compensate for extenuating circumstances, even though you knew that doing so might actually compromise the overall good?  Have you ever tried to "play through the pain" but decide in the end that the most profound admission of strength was to concede a certain weakness?  Please share your comments below.