* update #23  * (Day 256! ❤😊) –  brand new health struggle for little me of not just 1 or 2, but… 5 KIDNEY STONES! 😳 …who apparently all decided that my kidneys were very loving and welcoming!

Bonjour my Dearest FRIENDS ❤

A little sharing for you for this day about my never ending health struggles journey… one that I am writing while being once again… in a lot of pain 😟  Ouchiouaoua!!!

You know what!?… it is REALLY starting to look like my life is becoming a poster child for a perfect illustration of the expression ” When it rains… it pours! ” 😉 in regards to my health journey… one filled with being quite clearly quite “unlucky” to say the least!

So after my massive heart attack and my 5 successive surgeries of these past few months I just found out that I now have not 1, not 2… but 5 kidney stones!  😟  who clearly have decided, very VERY (not a typo! 😉 ) unfortunately, that my kidneys are very cozy and very welcoming!
And guess what!?… one of those 5 stones is actually 8mm !  😟  (1/3 of a inch)

The very first night that the pain actually started to hit… it did so VERY  quickly and very VERY (still not a typo 😉 ) drastically!!!
I was really not too sure what to make of it (as I have chronic low back pain pretty much every single day and I kind of thought that maybe this was just an extreme case of it!?…).  Also, since I could not reach any of my Doctors to ask which pain killers I could take or not as it all happened right in the  middle of the night, I spent the next 8-10 hours in excruciating pain that, as those of you who have deal with the same thing sadly already know, nothing at all (tried heat, cold, moving around, showering etc…) could ease for even a minute, and experiencing all of it without any pain killers except Tylenol!   And that ended up being, let’s write the understatement of the century (lol) … a truly horribleeeeee night! 😟

*** and by the way, if YOU or ANYONE YOU KNOW happened to know of any Doctor specialized in kidney stones PLEASEEEEEEEE by all means be so kind as to contact me as soon as you have a chance as I am in desperately need of advice on the best way to deal with all that… thank you SO MUCH in advance !❤ ***

Back to my sharings… so aside from all this unusually endless amount of “bad luck” (anything and everything happening in our lives is of course, in my modest opinion, nothing but simply good or bad luck – all so SO very random!… ), my overall journey is of course also one of immense “luck”, for no matter how much pain is in my each and every days (and my days are indeed filled with endless sources of physical pain… from my low back pain, to neck pain, to arms pain, to foot pain, to knees pain, to shortness of breath from my heart being 30 to 40% “dead” and scar tissue , to chronic tooth pain, to prostate pain etc… just to name a few) … yet I am still indeed so immensely lucky and grateful for very simply … still being here! 😍😀❤  and furthermore, for my brain and fingers and entire body… all allowing me to write these words to you! ❤  that alone is a LOT to be grateful for ! ❤

I am indeed still here to deeply cherish loving (and receiving the love of) my children, my closest friends, thousands of other friends… or the love and kindness of random strangers met through my days…
I am still here to deeply cherish witnessing the smile of a child… the tenderness of a couple holding hands… the endless beauty of nature… the nurturing and ever so gentle feel of the sun on my skin… the nurturing sounds and beauties of a wood fire… and so SOOOOOO very many other hundreds of what I like to call “small BIG “sources of great joys, to my heart, and to my soul… ❤

A fascinating aspect of our lives is that, quite regrettably, the simple fact of having a heart and spirit filled with endless love(as I am so blessed to have) does not means at all that… one’s body will follow along and be, and feel, the same… and in my personal case, my body happens to do quite the very opposite…
That huge dichotomy has always fascinated me, while also being very confusing or misleading to strangers (or to friends who only know very little about my daily realities of pain and suffering… while those who know me very well of course know the extent of my immense joys… but also the extent of my daily suffering 😌).

For all those who do not know (to no fault of their own of course ❤) almost always see me, or perceive me, as an extremely happy, joyful, upbeat person in the brief moment where we might have exchanged a few words or a hug in the passing… which is all indeed what my chosen “personae”, spirit, soul and heart truly all are…  while they would yet not have the slightest idea of the extent of my daily pain or suffering – once again of course of not fault of their own at all for “we all only know what we know and what our eyes can see”… which is one of the many realities of our lives…
I might “look like” living a great life… when more often than not my entire being, soul, heart and mind feel like every day every hour, is simply being in full “survival mode” and deep struggling mode… simply doing my best to make it to the next hour, to the next day… (all the while yet once again, my CHOSEN SPIRIT and what I CHOSE to gift to others is always solely love, support, joy and kindness… for I do indeed ALWAYS have that choice within any and all of my interactions).

So the ONLY reason WHY I decided to mention and share that today with you is so that maybe reading about it will allow you to have a very new approach, and most importantly a newly found and even much deeper compassion for anyone and everyone who you meet and interact with in your days ❤ … and because guess what?! 😉 just like little me, WE ALL SUFFER and HURT… and we always carry with us so much more than what we show to others…

Whether it is from emotional sources of pain… or physical ones… or both… or whether it is from deep scars from our past (and from having been privileged to the heart, and deep conversations, with very many Women, I learned SO MUCH about how so many have been so deeply hurt, so young, so often… and it breaks my heart for them to know so 😌😪)… but I just wanted to share my personal situation in a fully open and fully vulnerable spirit so that maybe it will allow you from now on to simply CHOOSE to ASSUME in any and all of your interactions with all others that they also most probably have DEEP SOURCES of HURT and PAIN as well… and doing so, whether in a 30 seconds brief chat with someone in the line at the grocery store… or during deeper and longer interactions, will beautifully change your heart and the humaneness and love of this moment… it could be a truly amazing journey for your heart… and for theirs…

Having this chosen approach, as I always do with all (which is VERY different from who I used to be 15 years ago… when I was very unaware, very self centered, very judgmental, sarcastic, lacking empathy, lacking compassion, not a good listener etc… in other words… not too good of a man to say the least! 😖🙄 lol ) will always be such a great gift to both hearts… both for your own heart in being always more loving and more compassionate… and of course also for the heart of the recipient of your always deeper caring and loving ❤

So as of little me, my body does indeed hurts a lot, pretty much all the time, in very many places… and yes it is of course very draining… and yes it does take a big toll on me often times… and yes also, it is pretty much invisible or imperceptible to most people who I interact with (whether in my work or in my social like), for my spirit almost always takes over in my interaction and predominates… just as I choose to control it… just as I always choose that what I “give” to others in terms of chosen kindness and love and energy is indeed fully under my control, fully a “choice”… while on the other hand I of course do not choose what I “receive” and what comes randomly to my life (in my present life, lots of endless health struggles, endless bad luck and sources of pain) but yes I always indeed CHOOSE what I give and gift to others… to the world around me… and so do YOU ❤  for we all do ALWAYS have that choice of what we offer to others! ❤

Also, despite all this pain, I always CHOOSE (for it is indeed always a choice, for each and everyone of us❤) for my heart and spirit to be filled with endless sunshine and gratitude, never forgetting for an instant that I am SOOOOO incredibly lucky to still be here… to live a life, to live days and hours that I often think of as “borrowed times”… “borrowed hours”… for indeed more than 1/2 of the people who go through what I did with my massive heart attack, are very tragically not here anymore 😥 and my heart SO goes out to all those who loved them and who so painfully miss them (my heart is not as much concerned for “them” though, as from having had a very”in person” glimpse into… death, actually dying for 8 long minutes… I can tell you that it is all very peaceful… very sterile and empty of joys… but also very empty of pain – by the way in case many of you are interested in my sharing much more about that “death” experience, please just let me know and I will either write a post for you about it) .

OK let’s now return to my little 5 UNINVITED GUESTS lol in my kidneys! 😕

Now a little medical sharing for those of you who do not now know that these infamous “kidney stones” look like… well… here they are… NOT very friendly looking isn’t it? lol  …and the idea of those making their way through your kidney’s conducts down into your bladder… then through your urethra (and through my little weewee in my case being a boy and all! lol ) is… well… NOT my idea of fun! lol

… and to amuse myself some, and now you as well 🙂  I tried to see what 8mm looks like and … the ring on this Woman’s finger is pretty much the size of one of my stone… and there again imagining this going through my urethra is… well… NOT the most exciting thing that I can think of ! 🙁

So let’s return to how this all started… as I mentioned, that whole brand new little health “hell” all started a few days ago, right in the middle of the night as I got awaken by a horrible pain in my low back, radiating all around my waist… a pain as sudden as it was severe… a pain that nothing at all, whether warm, cold or moving around could neither stop not relieve…
I tried going in the shower to find relief, which was a huge struggle in itself to even walk there from my bed with pain being like 9/10, but that did not help at all… I tried warm pads but did not help either… ice packs did not help either… Yoga’s child pose… any and all poses… NOTHING HELPED!😌…  and the entire night was pretty much well… did I mention it before ?…  NOT FUN! ;(

The next day I went to see my urologist (btw you kind of know that you are ‘not that young’ anymore when you have a urologist who you see frequently right? lol ) … long story short, and after X Rays etc… I was given the not so cool news that I have not just 1… not 2… but 5 kidney stones!!!! …including 2 large ones!… (one is over 8mm, stuck in the duct between my left kidney and my bladder). Ouchiaouaoua is what I say to all that! lol 😖😬

I will pass you the details of the whole struggle and only share a few infos with you…

• due to their large size, I just won’t be able to flush the largest ones them ( ‘flush” is Doctor’s code work for… pee them! lol ) as most people, thankfully, do for smaller ones 🙂

• thanks to all my heart issues and heart meds they can not break them down through ultrasound as also most people can do and benefit from… since, as the Doctor worded it ” the ultrasounds could make you bleed to death from internal bleeding due to your hearts and meds condition!… ”
  Great not so cool news either right!? 😯😔

• so the only option they gave me is general anesthesia (which is once again, like the one for my emergency spinal fusion a few months ago, very risky due to my heart situation) and they will access the stone … guess how?… through my penis!!!  So of course, by the time he barely finished that sentence… I had already ran down the stairs to my car and was ready to take off for… well… anywhere but his office!  lol
  Yes when I heard news I was… well…  not feeling very happy to say the least!😳

• and guess what!?… it gets worse!… I know I know right!!!… you are thinking, just like me, “Oh no!… it just has to stop somewhere in that landslide of bad news…” but NO!… so the “worse” part is that during the surgery where he will enter a camera and a device through my entire penis (which in my case won’t take that long to travel through! lol 🙃😉 ) then he will go through the bladder and into the duct going all the way up to my kidney… but the worse part of all is that after they break the stone inside me… or grab it… they are planning on leaving a longgggg STENT inside that vas so that it does not get clogged up… and here is the kicker… 1 to 2 weeks later, they will need to get back in, without anesthesia this time… and slide all the way back up to grab now the stent and… pull it out!!! 😳 through the vas.. through my bladder… through my penis!!!! 😳😳😳
  OK now just WRITING THIS literally gives me nightmares… you know how we can have “day dreams”… well… I guess I am now having “day-mares” about that procedure to come! 😳
  And God knows I have been through so much pain and surgeries and procedures already that I feel like I can handle quite a lot of pain to say the least… but the idea of that stent having to be pull out that way just sounds really REALLY quite frightening 🙁

Anyways… as you can see… lots of more new health struggles, surgery and pain to NOT look forward to…. I thought that maybe destiny would have given me a little break for maybe a few weeks… or a few months if I got lucky, but… I guess not.  This will now be my 6th surgery in a row for the past few months…

But… to leave you as always❤️ on a very positive and grateful note, for GRATEFULNESS is ALWAYS a CHOICE to each and everyone of us, no matter how struggling our lives and our bad luck can get at times… I will share with you that I simply remind myself with this yet one more medial struggle an source of lots of pain, and just as I have done these past few months through my many surgeries, that no matter how much pain I am in, emotionally or physical, I can still fill my heart, and my soul, endlessly with love and gratitude from always choosing through my days to offer endless kindness, caring, support and compassion to OTHERS, for their own suffering.
I truly believe, and do my best to “live” that way, that WHAT WE CHOOSE OFFER to TO OTHERS and to the WORLD is always totally INDEPENDENT of what we experience and are subjected to in our own life…
What we GIVE is ALWAYS A CHOICE… what we FEEL, EXPERIENCE, and are SUBJECTED to is NOT…. especially when it comes to mental health, emotional health, or medical/physical health.

Most people bumping into me randomly are always surprised that I am moving around and pretty much still standing … and they express it with an almost omnipresent ” You look great!”  and of course I know they mean well and loving and caring thoughts and words… but of course, as those of you who unfortunately, like me, live with, and in, daily pain, whether it is emotional or physical or both, pretty much everyday… pretty much all the time… we all know that our pain does not “show” to others like a scar in the middle of our cheek or forehead, or a cast, or crutches… No, our pain is actually very silent, and almost always invisible… and when it is not and it brings us down to tears, whether again from deep emotional pain, or physical one, or both… then there is usually pretty much no one around to see those tears… and no one around to dry them either…

I suddenly thought of also sharing these few thoughts as I feel that maybe I should one day write a post about what is the best, and most truly caring things to do for people who you KNOW are dealing with such daily pain, even if they are not showing it… Hopefully I will write it one day… but not today as today is unfortunately yet another “even more pain” kind of day for my beat up body 😌

I will leave you with a little informational sharing for those of you who are also so unlucky as to be prone to kidney stones, wanting to prevent them, or already dealing with them… here is a super interesting study about COFFEE intake (especially if, like me, you are also a little coffee lover (aka… addict 😉🤓😜 ).
The medical professionals used to say that COFFEE would INCREASE the risk of developing calcium and therefore… kidney stones… and now guess what!?  they say the very opposite…
I will let you judge… as of little me, coffee makes me IMMENSELY HAPPY so… I will still go for it… just in case they are right… for now 😉
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4232021/

Once again my most “dear to y heart” sharing with you today here is that I am a strong believer of always living in a way and spirit where… it is not because I feel very down that I cannot still bring smiles to others right?…I indeed never control how I feel… but I always control what I offer to others <3 … at least I love to think and love to live that way ❤️

The “BOOK OF YOU” 💗 should always be written by YOU, and YOU ONLY!

“  We are all equal in the face of the unfairness of suffering.
We are all, anything but equal… with everything else.  “

“  I am not saying that you are right or wrong…
I am not saying that I am right or wrong…
All that I am saying…
is that this is MY LIFE !   “

”  Bad things happen to good people all the time… and good things happen to bad people all the time… both always being such a gift to our lives, from their most beautiful opportunities for evolving of self.  “

I truly hope that these few modest words maybe will help you on your own journey… they have helped me so many times on mine…
( and in case that you would be interested in getting a copy of my modest book that offers very many of my most popular Inspirational Quotes, just as I wrote them to help me through the very many struggles and pain of my own journey… and as I hope with all my heart that my humble Quotes will also modestly help you on your own journey, and in dealing with your own worries and life’s struggles, you can find it on Amazon or by clicking here)

Copyrights 2018 by Pascal Monmoine – All Rights Reserved