Kidney Stone's End & A Visit to Punchbowl
Apr. 16th, 2024 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aHere's the headline: THE KIDNEY STONE HAS PASSED.
After I got home yesterday, I had pain ramping up again around 4pm. I was a bit worried about that but one oxycotin followed by a hot bath helped it to subside within an hour or so.
Today, I just had sharp jabs of pain here and there as the kidney stone made its way through my system, then passed it around 4pm. Total elapsed time between when I first suspected I had a kidney stone Sunday morning and when it passed: about 54 hours. Yay.
Mind you, I am still beat between not sleeping well last night and all the energy consumed by pain in the last day and a half, but feeling good beyond that.
Now, I never wrote about the last day of our Oahu trip. And I kind of wonder if airplane travel gets kidney stones going, as I remember also having brief symptoms in both Berlin and Boston after air travel there, when I had my previous kidney stone floating around for a long time before it started causing problems.
But exercise can also get kidney stones going, and I definitely did a lot of that Saturday in Oahu.
We had a relaxing morning. Croissants in the hotel room and then lounging around 'til they kicked us out.
Then we had expensive sandwiches at a top-end mall in Honolulu, west of Ala Moana Center.
And then it was headed toward Kimberly's time for her movie. A BTS movie, which was the reason we went to Oahu. So I headed out. (Not to the movie!) The weather reports had been threatening (c.f. the massive storm the night before we left), but it looked clear. So I checked out a Biki bike, rode as high as I could on the hill, up to the last Biki return station, and then hiked from there to Punchbowl Crater.
I'd wanted to do this one other visit, but decided I didn't have the time. Which was a good decision previously, as it took at least twice as long to get up to Punchbowl as Google said. It's not that it was super steep. But it was a long climb in the blazing hot Honolulu sun & humidity.
I was a bit surprised that there were houses, and even a major middle school, on the way up. I'd kind of expected desolate roads where I'd have to scrunch off to the shoulder, but no, there were sidewalks all the way. And so I made my way up.
Punchbowl Crater is, as the name suggests, a volcanic crater. But it's also a military cemetery and national monument. So I wasn't entirely surprised when the gates had signs up that restricted people from frivolity. They said, "No Exercising", "No Biking", "No Pets", and "No Picknicking". Against those restrictions the constant flow of tour buses in and out, with barkers on their loud speakers pointing out the sites, seemed somehow inappropriate.
The main crater is filled with the graves of soldiers, each just marked by a plaque laid in the ground, stretching as far as you could see in every direction in neat rows across the crater floor. It was solemn and awe-inspiring.
The Honolulu Memorial is in the back. There's a mighty staircase heading upward to a statue of Lady Liberty, with four "courts" to each side. Most of the visitors (not that there were a lot, the tour buses just came in and out without unloading as far as I could see) headed straight to top and then walked through a set of magnificent maps portraying WWII in the Pacific.
But the courts were what were really moving. There were just over 28,000 small plaques among them, each with a name engraved in white stone. Each the name of a soldier whose body was lost in WWII, the Korean War, or (later) the Vietnam War. MIA, buried at sea, or just lost. Some of the plaques, maybe one in 20, had a star on them to mark the body had later been recovered. Much like at the Vietnam Memorial in DC, you could just feel the weight of all those young lives lost. The courts were the most memorable part of the visit, and I'm sorry most people just rush past them.
A little further along the crater, there was an outlook with views of Honolulu, and I enjoyed that less than I expected because there are so many skyscrapers in every direction in Honolulu that they just block seeing the city as a whole.
So that was my afternoon on Oahu and the hike that likely got my kidney stone going. Afterward I hiked back down Punchbowl and out to Chinatown, where Kimberly and I had Vietnamese food before our trip back home.
It feels a million years ago around, but yesterday was quite the day.
After I got home yesterday, I had pain ramping up again around 4pm. I was a bit worried about that but one oxycotin followed by a hot bath helped it to subside within an hour or so.
Today, I just had sharp jabs of pain here and there as the kidney stone made its way through my system, then passed it around 4pm. Total elapsed time between when I first suspected I had a kidney stone Sunday morning and when it passed: about 54 hours. Yay.
Mind you, I am still beat between not sleeping well last night and all the energy consumed by pain in the last day and a half, but feeling good beyond that.
Now, I never wrote about the last day of our Oahu trip. And I kind of wonder if airplane travel gets kidney stones going, as I remember also having brief symptoms in both Berlin and Boston after air travel there, when I had my previous kidney stone floating around for a long time before it started causing problems.
But exercise can also get kidney stones going, and I definitely did a lot of that Saturday in Oahu.
We had a relaxing morning. Croissants in the hotel room and then lounging around 'til they kicked us out.
Then we had expensive sandwiches at a top-end mall in Honolulu, west of Ala Moana Center.
And then it was headed toward Kimberly's time for her movie. A BTS movie, which was the reason we went to Oahu. So I headed out. (Not to the movie!) The weather reports had been threatening (c.f. the massive storm the night before we left), but it looked clear. So I checked out a Biki bike, rode as high as I could on the hill, up to the last Biki return station, and then hiked from there to Punchbowl Crater.
I'd wanted to do this one other visit, but decided I didn't have the time. Which was a good decision previously, as it took at least twice as long to get up to Punchbowl as Google said. It's not that it was super steep. But it was a long climb in the blazing hot Honolulu sun & humidity.
I was a bit surprised that there were houses, and even a major middle school, on the way up. I'd kind of expected desolate roads where I'd have to scrunch off to the shoulder, but no, there were sidewalks all the way. And so I made my way up.
Punchbowl Crater is, as the name suggests, a volcanic crater. But it's also a military cemetery and national monument. So I wasn't entirely surprised when the gates had signs up that restricted people from frivolity. They said, "No Exercising", "No Biking", "No Pets", and "No Picknicking". Against those restrictions the constant flow of tour buses in and out, with barkers on their loud speakers pointing out the sites, seemed somehow inappropriate.
The main crater is filled with the graves of soldiers, each just marked by a plaque laid in the ground, stretching as far as you could see in every direction in neat rows across the crater floor. It was solemn and awe-inspiring.
The Honolulu Memorial is in the back. There's a mighty staircase heading upward to a statue of Lady Liberty, with four "courts" to each side. Most of the visitors (not that there were a lot, the tour buses just came in and out without unloading as far as I could see) headed straight to top and then walked through a set of magnificent maps portraying WWII in the Pacific.
But the courts were what were really moving. There were just over 28,000 small plaques among them, each with a name engraved in white stone. Each the name of a soldier whose body was lost in WWII, the Korean War, or (later) the Vietnam War. MIA, buried at sea, or just lost. Some of the plaques, maybe one in 20, had a star on them to mark the body had later been recovered. Much like at the Vietnam Memorial in DC, you could just feel the weight of all those young lives lost. The courts were the most memorable part of the visit, and I'm sorry most people just rush past them.
A little further along the crater, there was an outlook with views of Honolulu, and I enjoyed that less than I expected because there are so many skyscrapers in every direction in Honolulu that they just block seeing the city as a whole.
So that was my afternoon on Oahu and the hike that likely got my kidney stone going. Afterward I hiked back down Punchbowl and out to Chinatown, where Kimberly and I had Vietnamese food before our trip back home.
It feels a million years ago around, but yesterday was quite the day.
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Date: 2024-04-18 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 06:58 pm (UTC)