November 6

I got a call from Jack's mom, Cathy, early this evening while I was still at work.

"Where's the nearest urgent care facility?" she asked, anxiously. I told her, and then asked what was wrong.

"We think Jim has kidney stones," she answered, and we chatted only a few more moments before she hung up quickly to get Jack's dad to a doctor. Evidently, he's had kidney stones before, and from what I hear, they're not very fun to have. In fact, most people describe the pain as the worst they've ever felt.

About an hour later, I headed home, and when Jack called on his way home from work, I told him about his dad, so he headed to the urgent care place to wait with his mom. I had some work to do, so I stayed at home.

They finally sent Jack's dad to the ER to get a CT scan, and along the way it seems that some pain medications were administered.

And that's where the fun started.

Cathy said that when Jim got the first shot, he was in the middle of a sentence when all of the sudden his face went completely blank, and he trailed off to silence. Then, a few seconds later, he looked back up at her and said "I, um, forgot what I was talking about."

Later, when they were waiting for the test results, Jack's dad kept telling Jack and Cathy that he would "be just fine as soon as he went home and had a beer." He also wanted to go home (as in, back to east Texas) to his own hospital.

Looks like hard-headedness (especially while under the influence of drugs) is a just a genetic Hornbuckle trait.

When they all got home, Jack's dad was feeling goooooooooooooooood. He was feeling "I want to put trim in the bathroom tomorrow morning" good. "I want to operate a chop saw" good. And I'm not going to lie, watching your father-in-law slur all his words because he's all loopy from pain medication? Hilarious.

I think my favorite part was when he was trying to read all the big medical words from the hospital bill. There's not much better entertainment in this world than watching a stoned East-Texan try to say "nephrolithiasis."

But in all seriousness, we're really thankful that he's relatively okay tonight, and I am sad for the fact that he has to be in pain and evidently pass a kidney stone the size of 5 stacked dimes (ouch!!). I'm sure he could use some prayers for the next few days.

But for tonight? While he's feeling no pain in my guest room? I'm just going to hope he wasn't serious about not having to get out of bed to pee in the container the doctor gave him to collect the stones.