It's a Stone!

A Daniel story

We opened a bank account in TX the week before coming to Ukraine and Mom and Dad had to mail us our debit and credit cards.  It’s a long story, but suffice it to say our temporary bank cards expired on the 7^th a week and a half before this incident, meaning that we easily had enough money to cover us until the cards arrived by mail … assuming nothing drastic happened.  

Then something drastic happened. 

It was Tuesday the 18^th and I was sitting in class when my midsection started to hurt.   At first this wasn’t terribly alarming.  After all, we are in a new country, and our digestive systems have been taking a little while to adjust.  But after a visit to the restroom the pain increased … a lot.  There was a sharp shooting pain in my back and it felt like something inside of me really wanted to be out, and fast.   I sat there thinking, “I’m 99% sure that I’m not pregnant … 98.”  It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, and it hurt to lie down.  It hurt to breathe. 

A doctor had spoken with us before we left and she was concerned about what would happen if our appendix ruptured, and so my first thought was, “Great, three weeks in Ukraine and I get to have surgery.”   But I thought, between painful breathes, “Let’s check this out first.”  I looked online and it seemed my symptoms matched with kidney stones.    So I drank water, took some ibuprofen, went back to class and tried not to pass out. 

That evening, as the pain increased in magnitude and duration, we debated whether or not to go to the hospital to make sure that it really was kidney stones and not an ice pick that had materialized in my back.  The major detractor was money.  We didn’t have a lot, and while it hurt a lot, I still thought it was a kidney stone and there, probably, was nothing the doctors would do other than give me a few pills.  But we called our friends Sam and Mellissa to see about going to the hospital.   Sam called us a taxi and a friend of his met us at the hospital and translate.  Melissa came too, just in case we didn’t have the money to take care of everything.  As we rode in the taxi we prayed, “God, please let us have enough money.”   Melissa surprised us with our bank cards when we got to the hospital (they weren’t activated yet, but it was still a relief).

Naturally, five minutes after we showed up at the hospital, my pain started to ease.  But we went in to see the urologist.    At first the Urologist thought that I just had a tweaked muscle in my back, but he said if I wanted to pay the fees, I could have a urine test and we would do an ultrasound.  We found it!  The kidney stone was 5-6 mm and almost passed into the bladder.  The stone, or as I like to call it, my Little Bundle of Joy, is the little white dot in the middle of the picture just a little to the right.  They gave me three shots and a prescription for 4 different types of medicines.  I think was only in the hospital for about 1 ½ hours. 

I was feeling better, except for being sore in my bum where I had two shots.  After finding a 24-hour pharmacy, we headed for the subway, but as we were waiting for the next train, I did the math, It was 11:40 and by the time we got to the station where we meet our bus to go home, the last bus would have come and gone. 

So we had to call a taxi.  One problem, we didn’t have enough money for a taxi.  So we hopped a bus to Sam and Melissa’s had Sam call a taxi, borrow a few grn (Ukrainian money), rode home and finally got to sleep around 1. 

The total expense of the night:  Taxi ride to hospital (a 20-25 minute drive): 50 grn, doctor’s visit: 340 grn, ultrasound: 400grn, urine test: 160, 3 shots: 120 grn, 4 different types of medicine at the pharmacy:  240 grn, Marshuvka ride to Sam and Melissa’s:  5 grn, Taxi ride back to our apartment: 80 grn.

Total 1395 grn which is $174.

In the end we had to borrow 157 grn from Sam and Melissa which is right at $20 (and I happened to have a $20 bill).  The next morning, we were left with 4 grn and change.  It takes 5 grn to get to school, and we had to get to school to activate our cards.  We had exactly the right amount of money to pay for everything that happened, with about 15 cents to spare.

I think God has a sense of humor.