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🌿 Prologue | Meet Lazarus
By June, I’d had enough kidney stone surgeries and ER visits to qualify for a punch card—“buy 10, get one free.”
Somewhere between surgery #2 and the umpteenth CT scan, I started calling my left kidney Lazarus—because every time she almost died, she clawed her way back. She was dramatic, she was stubborn, and she refused to stay buried.
So of course, when my mind finally broke and I went to inpatient to patch up the rest of me, Lazarus decided to join the rebellion. While I was learning to breathe again, she was busy throwing stones—literally.
I had a medical note that said I had to ride in the front seat at all times, as if I were a fragile package marked “handle with prayer.” I’d explain it to the van drivers between therapy sessions, trying not to laugh at how ridiculous my life had become: emotionally stable-ish, physically on probation.
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💉 Scene 1 | The Stent Saga from Hell
Earlier that year, I’d already had a stent. It was in place for 30+ days. And it was the longest—and worst—month of my life (more on that in a future post). So when I was told I needed another one, I knew the drill: constant discomfort, endless pain, heating pad worn like a diaper, and no ibuprofen for a week before its removal. I dreaded it but trusted the medical team, including Dr. God’s Gift. Turns out he was wrong, because this new one? A whole different level of torture.
As I’m coming out of anesthesia, the pain hits before consciousness does.
I’m flailing, thrashing, ripping out my IV because my body is in full rebellion. By the time I’m aware enough to realize what’s happening, I’m sobbing—ugly, primal sobs. The post-op nurse said she’s never seen someone react like that in her 10-year career!
They can’t discharge me for eight hours because nothing touches the pain. Nothing.
A few days later, when I finally meet with the local urologist, he tells me the stent needs to stay in for six to eight weeks.
I break.
Right there in his office, I start crying like a child. “I can’t live like this,” I tell him. And I mean it. He says there’s nothing he can do, that it should really be Mayo’s problem.
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🧑⚕ Scene 2 | Enter Dr. Elspeth Lovewell
That’s when she appears—Dr. Elspeth Lovewell.
Chief Resident. Calm voice. Kind eyes.
The woman radiates competence and something rarer: actual empathy.
She doesn’t flinch at my pain. It turns out she helped with the stent placement, so she witnessed the chaos when I ripped out my IV, saw the panic that anesthesia doesn’t hide, and instead of writing me off as “dramatic,” she believed me.
After leaving the local urologist, I’m immediately on the phone with Mayo’s urology department begging for help. Dr. God’s Gift once again talks to me like he’s the God of Medicine, all ego and zero humanity. So I do what desperate people do: I ask for his boss. Turns out that was Dr. Lovewell—and miracle of miracles—she was standing right next to him, so he handed her the phone.
I tell her I need someone to give a f*** about me, someone who won’t minimize my pain or leave me drowning in bureaucracy. She listens. And when I ask her to be my surgeon—my person—until the end of this whole ordeal, she says yes. She also says if I can wait a week, she will remove the stent and do a laser lithotripsy. She also promises I’ll never have to deal with that other doctor again. I cry again—more from gratitude than pain.
Dr. Elspeth Lovewell—no, that’s not her real name, but until I ask her permission it’s the name she will have—doesn’t laugh when I tell her I named my kidney Lazarus. She just nods, like someone who knows that naming your pain sometimes makes it easier to let it go.
She’s brilliant and beautiful and honest. She’s the first doctor who makes me believe I might actually survive this with both my dignity and my sense of humor intact.
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💥 Scene 3 | The Turning Point
When she takes me into surgery, the plan is simple: laser the stubborn stone out of my ureter. I call her Marigold Snicket because her journey was A Series of Unfortunate Events. But my body, ever the plot-twister, has other plans.
Snicket, it turns out, has grown tissue around the stone. She is completely sealed off. Impassable.
Instead of a quick procedure, it becomes an emergency.
They can’t fix it.
They have to bypass it.
And just like that, I wake up with a nephrostomy bag.
It’s not pretty. It’s not poetic. It’s survival, hanging off my body in plastic form.
But Elspeth keeps her promise. She’s there when I wake up. She explains what happened. She doesn’t sugarcoat it, and she doesn’t disappear.
For the first time in months, I feel something close to trust.
As I got to know my bag, I decided to name it Eeyore because he arrived during a particularly dramatic medical plot twist, when Lazarus the Left Kidney staged a full protest and Marigold Snicket the Ureter decided to host a stone. Together, they prompted a spontaneous residency at the Mayo Clinic and gave Eeyore his time to shine.
He may not have chosen the spotlight—but now that he’s here, he’s making the most of it.
Quietly. In the corner. Slightly leaking existentialism. Plus every time I check it or empty it, I swear I hear him say, “Thanks for noticing me.”
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🏥 Scene 4 | The Airbnb Sauna & the 2 a.m. ER Run
Fast-forward to our next Mayo Clinic trip. I’m supposed to be there for a renal scan, but first we have to survive the Airbnb from hell. We open the door at midnight, and the house greets us with a 99-degree sauna. The AC is off, the walls are sweating, and so am I.
Normally, a little heat would be fine—but I’ve got a fresh wound dressing around my nephrostomy tube that cannot get wet. Within minutes, it feels like my medical supplies are melting to my body.
We realize we’ve left the bandages back home. Cue CVS at 1 a.m., where he’s wandering the aisles like a discount-bin mummy. Back at the house, we try to peel off the old bandage only to discover it’s fused itself around the tube like industrial duct tape.
At 2 a.m., we admit defeat and go to the ER. The doctor looks at me like, “You came here for this?” I nod. She sighs. Then the nurse takes one look, mutters “Oh honey,” and spends 20 minutes delicately cutting the thing off.
When she’s finally done, she pats my arm and says, “You were right to come in.” Vindication! She even sends us home with professional-grade supplies—basically the Louis Vuitton of wound care.
Somewhere between the CVS fluorescent lights and the nurse’s kindness, I start laughing again. My life has become a sitcom nobody asked for, and somehow, I’m still the main character.
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🩸 Scene 5 | The Lesson in the Mess
My body wasn’t betraying me—it was begging me to listen.
Pain wasn’t weakness; it was information.
And self-advocacy, I learned, isn’t rude—it’s holy.
You can love the medical team or strongly dislike some of them and still demand better care. You can be grateful and still say, “This isn’t enough.”
Advocate for yourself, because no one else truly will.
Fight until you get the help you need.
And when you find the people who meet you there—like Elspeth—never forget that grace wears scrubs, too.
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💭 Reflection | The Day My Body Said No More
Sometimes your body doesn’t whisper; it screams. Mine screamed in blood work, CT scans, blood clots (more on that in a future post as well), and midnight ER visits. It said “no more” not to punish me, but to protect me.
Surrender wasn’t weakness. It was a kind of faith—the kind where you stop white-knuckling your own survival and start trusting the people who show up when you’re too exhausted to keep fighting.
Lazarus is still hanging on for now, defying the odds like she always does. But when her time comes, Dr. Lovewell will be there. And I’ll know she’s in good hands.
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💕 Before You Go
If this post resonated, drop a comment or share it with someone who’s learning that rest isn’t weakness—it’s wisdom.
Next week, we’re diving into Grief Has No Calendar—But She Did Take My Dog — the story of love, loss, and vanilla ice cream.
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🍦 Snack Call | Because Ritual Matters
Next week’s snack: Vanilla Ice Cream.
Because it’ll be all about my one true love, Samantha—and she loved it. I gave her some every night, and I still can’t scoop it without seeing her eyes.
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🎭 Closing Line | Residency Night Two
I used to think strength meant outlasting the pain.
Now I know it means asking for help before the pain becomes the only language your body speaks.
Curtain falls for tonight. Encore next week. Bring your spoon. It’s going to be tender, sweet, and deeply human.
— EK
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