A Horrible Amount of Kidney Stones

I was thinking about re-naming the blog "A Horrible Amount of Kidney Stones," but I thought that might be weird & I am trying to keep this blog positive. This phrase is what a doctor in the ER said to me late last Friday night. After going in with a ton of pain (it was not the Worst pain though) and worrying it could be ectopic or possibly appendecitis, it was discovered through a cat scan that I have a whole lotta kidney stones. Luckily they appear small. I have to hydrate myself to another level, avoid extra salt ( I love salt!) chill on the xtra vitamin C & avoid dairy & meat in big portions. It definitely could be worse. I am actually enjoying the extra energy I am feeling from being super hydrated. Next week I go to a real urologist and get the lowdown on my plan of attack--probably just wait for pain & take drugs---but I'm looking into the homeopathic route too.

Its funny the difference one day can make.

My new neighbors actually seem really cool. I talked to both the mom & the dad, in the parking lot and on the playground. They are super nice, young and their kids are very friendly and sweet.

After a day where every mom I met seemed mean, today all the moms were really nice around here. The Creature happily made a friend at his Nature Camp so I stayed behind to meet his mom at pick up. I wanted to exchange numbers so they can play this summer. She turned out to be such a nice woman. She's Mexican, married to a New Zealander and they have lived in NZ, Mexico, CA & here together. She was a med student who dropped out and stayed home when her kids were born. She had 2 super high risk pregnancies and so we have a lot to talk about. :)

Then on the playground I met a brand new mama, also from Mexico, with a precious 2 month old girl. She asked me in Spanish if she could come over and hang out in the mornings. That will be nice too, I always wanted a coffee friend in the neighborhood.

I was scared yesterday about being a stay at home mama with the whole summer in front of me. Today I feel better about it & I plan on doing it one minute at a time.

I saw this on a mom's post on a message board & I couldn't resist.

I have to add that I'm very cautious about what I put here and I don't want to offend anyone. I don't judge parents who chose this surgery for their sons without having all the facts. Its only recently that this operation became standard, in the last century, and all of the information put out was strictly pro-circ, by doctors, the media etc.

If you look at the history of circ in the US this is a surgery that took hold in our culture as a "cure" for various diseases and disorders. Yet, a century later, every single "benefit" of circumcison has been disproven. The latest is HIV, 3 studies from Africa show that performing circs on adults can lower their chance of HIV transmission by 50%. If you take the time to read each study its obvious how flawed each one was and they are a little unethical too. The cut guys were home healing while the intact men were out on the town. Would an American man ever trust his circed status as his only protection against HIV? Why are Africans treated like idiots?


Circumcision is still a "cure" looking for a disease. The complications from this surgery, especially on a tiny newborn, far outweigh the complications of keeping the body the way it was designed. The adhesion rate alone is 70%!


More and more people are leaving their kids intact now, the rate in the US today is 50%--so locker room issues are not a good reason anymore. Because of problems our generation had with tighter circs, they are now cut extremely loose--to retain some of the frenulum (b/c the foreskin is a body part with parts & purposes like any other) so looking like Dad is not even possible. Who sits around comparing genitals anyway? :)

I think its important to be able to talk openly about things that are just nuts in the medical world. There are many examples of things that have been done throughout modern medicine's history that have been totally bananas--bloodletting, giving women big doses of hormones they aren't supposed to have in abundance anymore & then not expecting cancer. How about doctors in the 1940's putting women into twilight sleep to give birth? Routine, non-religious circ was first pushed in the era of bloodletting.

Nowadays an OB that does one circ a day can make more than $34,000 extra every year. The pressure to do it in the hospital can be pretty intense--I've dealt with it 4 times. The funny thing is that once I said no--the doctors and nurses thanked me for choosing not to. When else are you solicited for surgery on someone who can't consent? I can almost guarantee this surgery (for newborns) will be gone in 10 years. The other countries that once did it routinely dropped it once universal health care became standard---Australia, Canada, England. The human body is perfect and amazing in its design and it is totally unnatural to bring home a hurting wounded baby just because he's a boy in America.

Random thoughts

I don't have the energy or wherewithall for a normal post, plus my camera is sadly kaput--so a few things I'm thinking about today:

Why are people so scared of bugs that they will spray poison around their kids? Why would they spray the whole back of their house, isn't that the bugs world? So bizarre. My new neighbors are here and I'm not that excited so far...

Lil Wayne is oddly fascinating. His music is super cheesy but he has a certain appeal.

What is up with suburban moms being so unfriendly today? I had to ask 2 different moms if I could borrow sunscreen at my sweet Creature's nature camp and you would think I was asking for a pint of their children's blood. They seemed so shocked that I would ask. Then I went to Trader Joe's and was almost crashed into by about 6 different moms, I smiled--they scowled.

I had a huge uphill battle with my almost 5 year old today, my sanity was frayed and I was about to run out the door to freedom--but I got a grip and so did he. We worked together and he worked hard on helping himself become happy and he had a great day at Nature Camp.

This is a vision of Sunday brunch at Cindi's---mimosas for adults and mock-mini-mimosas for kids. Afterwards we went to the small Ren fest and it was a beautiful drive and a great hot day for it. The boys met the Queen and then came back, knighted, and met her again. It was lots of fun, with bawdy songs and many nice people.