At work, what I thought was a twinge in my back turned into a full-on, nausea-inducing thoracic pain. I thought that laying down on the ground would help straighten out my back (it didn’t). Both heat on my back in the car and via heating pad wasn’t touching it either.

I called my mother, thinking that I was finally inheriting my birthright of awful menstrual cramps, and she told me to go immediately to the doctor.

I drove in to urgent care, who immediately assumed it was a kidney stone and told me to go next door to the hospital to go to the ER. Once I was in the waiting room, I couldn’t stop pacing in the hopes it would alleviate what was becoming unbearable pain. I got into a room pretty quickly, but it took about two hours to get either pain meds or a CT.

By the time I got the imaging, I had already passed the stone, and was discharged with pain meds and an order for a follow-up with a urologist.

I say this with no hyperbole: I would take a bullet at point-blank than have another kidney stone.