I was on my way to class at Calvin College one January morning when I was strickened with a severe pain in my lower right abdomen. The pain was awful! I was sure that it was appendicitis. After all, I have had a life long fear of this so it would stand to reason that I would get it.

I went to emergency figuring that surgery was on the horizon. But, the doctors thought otherwise. Instead, they did some tests and declared it to be a kidney stone. They gave me a strainer and told me to strain my pee. Nice. A college student using public restrooms having to strain his pee. Oh, I am sure no one noticed, particularly when I had to wash the strainer in the sink.

Well, this was interim at Calvin College. Interim was a month long program where students took fun classes for 3 hour every day for a month. Fortunately, my class was watching Hitchcock films every day for a month.

I arrived late. And keeping with his promise that the doors would be locked when the movies started, I arrived late, only to discover that the doors were locked. Bah! Fortunately, I had the master key to the campus and let myself in.

Quietly, I entered the auditorium and took a seat in the back. Unfortunately, when my eyes adjusted to the light I realized that I was sitting next to my professor. I looked at him and he at me and we said nothing. Both of us sat there and watched the movie.

Later, after the movie was over, I asked some intelligent questions. My first obstacle was over come. Great!!

But, I still had the problem of straining my pee. And since I was determined to drink lots of liquids, pee straining was an event that occurred several times a day.

At first, I’d always used a stall but I still had the problem of rinsing the sieve. People always had comments such as panning for gold? So, I just gave up and started using the regular urinals. No problem. But still no stone!

After awhile, I just gave up. No stone. No sieve! But, then one night, as I was getting ready for bed, I took a pee and BINGO, the stone came out!

Now, I wasn’t using the sieve so the stone went into the toilet. Rats!!

I had this thing about fishing things out of the toilet. I don’t use my hands! So, instead, I took the fish net from the aquarium and used it to retrieve the stone. SUCCESS!!

I put the stone in an old pill bottle and dropped it off at the doctors. A few days later the doctors office called and told me that the stone was calcium. YES! If you can name it, you can claim it.

Many years later, I changed doctors and he asked about my medical history. I told him about the stone and I told him it was calcium. He said that they are all calcium but asked what kind of calcium was it? I didn’t have a clue.

Oh, well. At least I strained it.