IT’S 2:35 AM, NO POWER, & THEN THERE WERE KIDNEY STONES: A windswept stormy night has shifted conservative overreaction, outrage, & offense of the French & their ceremonies on the socials to the 1st world dilemma of complaint of no power since 6:30 or gratefulness that there was a normal power supply to lose, displaying a resolve that if held by Lewis & Clark, would have deprived Thomas Jefferson of his land grab & the NBA of the two state anomaly known as the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. The memory machine relays that around 4 years ago, I was dealing with my 6th battle in the Kidney Stone Wars & this, the ureteral stent. I received it after 48 hours of Miss Julie’s in home suffering of my sweating, contorted, testosterone driven, it’ll pass bravado that like Woddy Hayes Buckeye offense, didn’t pass. An ER visit revealed a 13mm × 7mm T-bone steak shaped villain with a posse of 4 standing as firm as Leonidas & his 300. Surgery was the only route to victory & my combat medal would be 5 days with the stent. The stent, the torture device that if this is what the winners get, what do they hand the losers? For the uninitiated, it’s a 14” piece of hardware store plastic tubing tied to 30 inches of monofilament cut from the nearest fisherman’s Zebco 33 Carolina rig & inserted to “widen the urethra” which ought never to happen to a fella. What it actually did was make “urination” & “volcanic eruption” interchangeable terms for 120 hours at which time I could return to the office for removal or do it myself at home with the instruction to not stop pulling once I started. I chose the home option, regrettably stopped pulling once & revealed as much toughness as those without power & oh, the language I used. After recovering my dignity & feeling in my legs & before returning the bill by mail, I deducted an office visit, one hour of billable services & nominated myself for New England Journal of Medicine Intern of the Year. Neither move met with success & you thought Aunt Becky was the only one that had a difficult 2020. It’s 3:37AM, still no power & we now return you to regularly scheduled programming…