A valid excuse for not eating healthy.

We should all make sure to eat our veggies and fruit. Not me! I now have a doctors order to not eat healthy. I have been having some kidney issues for the last 3 weeks. I just passed my 13th kidney stone in one year and it was a nice size one. It almost did not want to come out and my kidney was not liking the effects of that, but it did pass and it was about 5mm. The funny thing is that it was in the shape of a kidney. I had to go to the emergency room after 9 days of not passing it because I had bloody urine, headaches, pain going from my ureter up to my kidney, and swelling. They did a CT scan and saw that it was stuck in my ureter, but still small enough that I could pass it. I had only slight hydronephrosis. I also had another large kidney stone in my left kidney. Well, the stone in my ureter slowly moved down and I eventually passed it with lots of pain. I had kept a little collection of some of my kidney stones that I passed during my pregnancy so my doctor sent them off to the lab. Then today I went and saw a urologist. I found out that the I had a couple of kidney stones in both kidneys; all small enough to pass, but the one in my left kidney was bigger than the one I just passed. So, I am going to undergo lithotripsy to break it up. It is a short procedure where they will lay me on a bed of water with a machine over me that pinpoints where the kidney stone is then ultrasound waves will shoot through the bed of water under me, through my skin, and break up the kidney stone. I will then proceed to urinate gravel for the next couple of days. Sounds fun, huh.

The best part is that I am now on a low oxalate acid diet because it looks as though the kidney stone I just passed is a calcium type. This diet is horrible because high oxalate foods are green leafy vegetables, nuts, berries, wheat, and chocolate. Ahhh! I love nuts, chocolate and berries. I also put spinach in a lot of my food. I also need to avoid ground pepper and parsley. I have to limit, beans, carrots, green peppers, sweet p0tatoes, sodium, and vitamin C. Vitamin C converts into oxalate. I am in a crisis. I love food. I guess carbs and some veggies and fruits are not out of the question, but really what other healthy foods can I have? I just got the new cookbook from Jessika Seinfield, "Deceptively Delicious," because I wanted to try adding more healthy stuff to my food and everything in that book she uses is high in oxalates. If anyone has any suggestions of good reciepes or foods that I could eat, let me know. This is going to have to be a life changing thing because my kidneys have been going into overdrive producing these stones and being pregnant has not helped the situation, but I now realize that the foods that I craved and ate the most during my pregnancy were only contributing to the increase in my production of kidney stones. Hopefully this diet works. Having an obstructed ureter was not fun and I would rather help the situation with diet than have to take medications for it for the rest of my life.