Warning! Watch what you eat!

About a week and a half ago, my husband came home early from work; he's never taken a sick day. Luckily, I was off that day and when I saw him come home he could hardly walk. He came in and crumpled up on the couch, unable to move from the pain. In the 8 1/2 years I've known him, I've never heard him complain about pain, including during his wisdom tooth surgery the week before. I told him to, "Get up, we're going to the emergency room." I knew it was bad when he didn't resist.

As soon as the triage nurse saw him, he knew that my husband had a kidney stone. As we learned later that day, it was a relatively big stone that appeared to be lodged in his ureter (the tube that connects the kidney to the bladder). They sent us home with pain medications hoping that he would be able to pass the stone before he would see the urologist 4 days later. He didn't. The pain increased. The meds worked less and less everyday. When we saw the urologist he said he could maybe fit him in for surgery to remove the stone 8 days later. The next day my husband couldn't even move from the couch because the pain was so bad-although he kept telling me he was fine. Finally, the doctor had an opening for surgery in 3 days! I'll spare you the gory details of the surgery and the aftermath, but basically I think passing the stone would have been a more pleasant experience.

Why am I telling you this? Why would you care? Well, we've never been the type of people to really watch what we eat. We have always loved food. We try and eat everything. We are always excited for something new, something great. The problem is, we also eat a lot of unhealthy things. We never thought about the consequences since we are relatively young and healthy, but now it has caught up with us. We have been told that kidney stones are genetic, but they are also caused by the food you eat. My husband does not know of any family history of this condition so we can only assume that it is a result of our poor nutrition. So basically, we need to watch what we put into our bodies.

Now that I'm trying to do my part for the environment, I've been taking a closer look at what organic really means. While I did know that organic meant that the food was made without pesticides, horomones, and other things your wouldn't want to eat, I was surprised to learn that it also means it is created in an environmentally friendly manner. The latter was my main reason for my recent switch to organic. I know that eating organic will not prevent kidney stones, but I think it's important to pay attention to what we eat in every way. By this I mean watching how much salt we eat, staying hydrated, trying to eat less red meat (which is also bad for the environment), trying to eat organic, eating the rainbow as nutritionists preach, etc. Lately I've been cooking more, and we've been going out less, which may not seem like much, but its a big change for us. We've also started to eat more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. This does not mean we are going to abandon our lust for food and our quest for the greatest trip for our taste buds, but it does mean that we will seek out more healthful options more often. My husband and I both know that these past two weeks are not worth revisiting and we don't want anyone else to take that trip either.