[Red Badger]

I have heard that it it the closest a man will come to feeling like childbirth........................

[The_Reader_David]

I have heard women who have experienced both childbirth and kidney stones say that the pain from kidney stones is worse than that from childbirth. I don’t know whether this is true, or whether pain of childbirth is blunted in retrospect “on account of the joy that a man has been born into the world,” as the Evangelist John put it.

I had a bout of kidney stones and indeed they were quite painful, but during it, I kept thinking, “This hurt a lot, but really. . . worse than childbirth? . . . it’s not really *that* bad.” In retrospect, though, it *was* the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.

Since mine were the calcium variety, I’ve taken my urologist’s advice to drink lemon juice, in the form of large quantities of San Pelegrino limonata. Besides preventing kidney stones, it helps support one of the weaker Eurozone economies.