Well, that was an exciting evening.

I had to take Kevin to the ER–what seemed like an attack of cripplingly painful gas turned into vomiting turned into sufficient pain that Kevin said "You know, I think you need to take me to the hospital now." For the record, driving fifteen miles over the speed limit, in the dark, in the rain, while somebody whimpers in the backseat and you think "Oh sweet Ganesh, let this not be appendicitis," is not an experience I’m lookin’ to repeat any time soon.

Thankfully, nothing with the appendix. Turns out that he has kidney stones. Or at least one kidney stone deciding to make its way down the great river Ureter and into the promised land.

Growing old is a bitch.

On the pain scale, it’s hard to quantify these things, but my mother had one once, and said it was significantly worse than labor, and this is a woman who’s first (me) was badly breach and who’s second involved a broken tailbone and no epidural. According to Kevin in his few lucid moments, it was easily the worst pain of his life, ever, bar none, and oh god jesus motherfucker please let it be over.

The staff was awesome. It was a nearly empty waiting room, but apparently that was because everybody kept coming in through the ambulance doors. They finally got him into a bed, and a nurse who had had NINE kidney stones himself came in, loaded him up with drugs and fluids, and told him about what he could expect. This guy was great, the whole staff was very good, Chatham Hospital, should you ever be in this neck of North Carolina and find yourself curled in fetal position and praying for death.

(I, uh, might have fudged a bit about our relationship on the forms. For the record, we’re still not getting married, no matter what might have been implied to the hospital staff when words like "Authorization to Treat" are requiring signatures. Christ, gay rights aside, I want domestic partnership laws for ME.)

I got him home about five hours later, doped to the gills on morphine–he hasn’t passed it yet, but he says it hurts a lot less than it did. He’s got a prescription for one of the excitingly debilitating painkillers, and hopefully it’ll get worked out soon.

It must be love. I can’t think of anything else that would get me to help hold somebody up while they pee into a jar, and we won’t even get into checking the results for gravel afterwards.

Fortunately he has insurance, so everything will hopefully be okay on that front, it was just a long and miserable night for him.

And I’m very tired.