I keep this glass tube of gravel on a shelf in my study to remember the distinct agony caused by a half dozen small sharp rocks carving their way through my trunk over a 5 day period. Why preserve the memory? First, I believe it's a blessing to remember pain. Most people can't do it, but I'm trying to force myself to. Good health is always temporary and usually taken for granted, and I'm lucky to have an excuse to appreciate it. Second, seeing that little vial of pebbles each morning reminds me to drink water -- lots of it. Water flushes my kidneys and prevents calcium crystals from forming in them.

Incidentally, you're looking at only half the stones I eventually gave birth to. I had a 1.5 cm rock in each kidney. They were separately shattered by a non-invasive (yet still traumatizing) procedure called lithotripsy. Or I should say, it wasn't the procedure that traumatized me but what immediately followed -- namely, the descent through my ureters of a broken stone that had been too large to leave my body whole. I took this photo of the remains of the left calculi shortly after passing the remains of the right, but before I'd added the right-side fragments to the vial.

There's far more I could add to this, both clinically and personally. And I will. Later.