Back when I was first being treated for Karen the Kidney Stone, when she was merely 8.4 mm and when I didn’t have hydronephrosis, I felt it was a little weird that I wasn’t being referred to a specialist, especially since the kidneys are finicky fuckers, but I kept my mouth shut and took the medication my primary care provider prescribed, expecting that it would somehow resolve the issue and I’d be back to my regular life. But here we are, months later, and the stone has grown too big to have a lithotripsy done. Instead, in a week, a urologist is going up into my kidney with a tube and manually removing the damn thing. There are risks to this procedure, of course, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Self-advocacy could have gotten this taken care of so much earlier, and probably with less stress to my psyche and to my body. Even though I feel my PCP should have referred me to a specialist when Karen was smaller as part of treatment, I have to accept part of the responsibility because I didn’t take the initiative and ask for a referral in the first place. Had I been more involved in my care, I could have avoided this outcome – a probably somewhat damaged kidney and pretty constant pain – and you can bet I will never make the same mistake again. It’s not that I don’t trust my PCP to make sound clinical decisions, but when I feel something isn’t right, I am going to speak up and offer my opinion. It’s my body, after all.

And I encourage everyone to act with the autonomy I did not. Use my experience as a cautionary tale for what can happen if you just blindly trust any person in the medical field. Luckily for me, my story has a pretty simple conclusion, but not everyone has the same happy(ish) ending. So keep your providers on their toes: ask questions, get second opinions, pay attention to your body.

Take an active role in your own care; I promise, you’ll thank your future self if you do.