Thanks for all the support.
The stone is still in, but I put in a good day at work and now I've upgraded to Spaten Lager and halfway decent frozen concentrate lemonade, so I'm no longer feeling sorry for myself. We're entering the holiday season with a big reduction in workload so I will have some time to really get the hydration going now. Hope I can get it out without medical assistance. Last one I had they missed it on xray and CT scan and I passed it on my own- 6.9mm, so I lost a bit of faith in the system, which is ironic because I'm a physician.
I think I'm ready to make some diet changes if it will help. I suppose I'm finally going to have to start taking care of myself.
Physician, heal thyself! I'm a GP myself, and don't I know about the "Oh yeah, one day I have to look after myself as well as my patients" - routine.
Seriously, I feel for you. Kidney stones are a bummer! To pass the time, here is a story about hunting with the medically challenged:
About 8 weeks ago, I hunted a property south of my NSW home with Ray, an old patient of mine and his very fit, very keen hunter son-in-law, Jeremy. Deer are as thick as fleas on a dog in the area, after having been released from unsuccessful deer farms a few decades ago, and are a pest, so farmers are happy to have them culled. We started at first light, around 0600, and by 0900 both Jeremy and I had a fallow spiker on the ground (in between we had seen 26 red deer and 14-16 fallows, as well as numerous kangaroos and 2 foxes). We had followed the deer uphill to the very end of the farm, and now had to carry them out. Weeell... turned out Jeremy had a hernia OP just recently, so I carried one out, rigged as a backpack, then the other on a pole with Ray. Guess In earned my venison that day!
2 weeks ago I was on the same property with another older hunter, Tony. Before we left, he told me he had had bowel cancer and has a stoma bag, so I was thinking: "Great! Guess who gets to carry the deer out again!" We got there just before first light, about 0450, and made out 2 deer in the headlights as soon as we drove in. Getting out very quietly, we loaded out rifles and sneaked into the paddock they were feeding in. Eastern Australia has had an exceptionally wet spring and summer, and they were standing in belly-high grass, completely oblivious to their surroundings (in New Zealand we used to call them "silly spikers" at this time of year). We got to 100m of them, took position behind a tree, and as soon as they moved into position, I took out the first with my 6.5x55mm Swedish Mauser, and Tony the other with his .257 Roberts Ackley improved. Both dropped like sacks of potatoes. And the nice thing was - we could drive right up to them, so that 0530 we had 2 spikers gutted and in the back of the ute! Sometimes you get doubly lucky.
Hope that passed some time, and I especially hope you already passed the stone, and have a great Christmas!