Physical Pain and Helplessness
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For a week now  I am suffering from renal colic. A  6 mm kidney stone
is clogging my ureter and my  kidney is under pressure, which is very
painful.

This is  a very common disease  and there are many  testimonials from
famous people who have suffered this  in the past, for example amoung
french  writers,  my  aera  of  expertise,  Michel  de  Montaigne  or
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I often fantasize  about living in past times, in  periods dear to my
heart, but  this disease makes me  shudder: how can we  survive these
torments without  Ketoprofen? My  days literally revolve  around this
drug that I take every 12 hours. And  I know than at least the last 4
hours can be quite  painful and give me a little  taste of what would
be my present life without it.

To be left  to suffer without remedy  during a few hours  (8 hours is
today my current record), in the middle of night, makes you feel very
miserable and  fragile. I  am quite  lucky because this  is for  me a
parenthesis  that  will  end  with the  absorption  of  the  expected
medication. And knowing that helps a lot.

What is more, I know that this  whole period will end either with the
natural expulsion of the stone or with surgery.

But what about the diseases we don't know how to treat today? You can
just imagine how patients feel.