Super Mario Bros. 2
Needs no introduction. Super Mario Bros. 2 is not the realSuper Mario Bros. 2, but anyone who says that we should have gotten the actual one back in the day is just plain wrong. This is an excellent game, and it is aging just fine alongside its NES brothers.
Now, kidney stones generally occur within older people or those who are overweight. During the peak of my kidney stone era, when I had three in a single year, I maxed out at about 195 lbs, the heaviest I have ever been in my life. Not severely overweight, given that I’m a pretty tall guy, but definitely not an ideal weight either.
However, the doctors said that it was not enough to garner such frequent kidney stones in a mid-twenties year old man, and one figured that there must be an underlying problem besides my diet. Turns out, he was correct.
Unknown to both my parents and me, my left kidney is actually a “double pelvic/double ureter” kidney. This means that it operates as two separate kidneys and both have ureters that connect to the bladder.
It’s not exactly a dangerous situation, but it can lead to an increase in kidney stones. Water is important for a kidney to function properly as it keeps them hydrated, and flushed kidneys means less chance of calcified chunks to take form. However, with a split kidney, water will usually travel to the larger, healthier, and more “normal” half, meaning that the weaker, smaller half tends to be drier unless the body is constantly hydrated.
This smaller half was the reason for my kidney stones. Fine, I keep myself hydrated, and if things get too serious, the doctors say I’ll still have the larger half working properly if the lower half ever needs to come out. Surgery is “unlikely” if I treat my body properly, but “unlikely” is not a word hypochondriacs, like myself, want to hear.
“I have a defective kidney.” The psychological impact of something being “wrong” inside your body is a heavy burden on anybody’s soul. Even if the situation is not immediately dangerous and problems can be picked up from a mile away now that I know about it, the idea of something “wrong” inside took a lot to get over.
But hey, it’s okay! Super Mario Bros. 2 has a lot of elements inside of it too that other Super Mario Bros. games don’t have. Lifting enemies above Mario’s head, POW blocks, an entirely new army of enemies to battle, Princess Toadstool and Toad as playable characters. Super Mario Bros. 2 might be “defective” and “wrong” on the inside, but it’s still a beloved game that hangs with the best of its legendary siblings.
Likewise, my kidney might be strange and weird, but it still functions. The doctor also graciously reminded me that it has kept me going for 30 years, so it can’t be that useless. Hopefully, it has many more years of health now that I know how to properly treat it.
If you can’t tell by the length of this section, coming to terms with this was actually harder than passing the kidney stones themselves. Getting the bloody thing out is only half the battle. The rest is figuring out how to stop them from forming.
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