"So long, Sweet Lime!": "Dorothy moves to click her ruby shoes right in tune with the Darkside of the Moon"

Well, another show comes to it's close. We finished up the Wizard of Oz today with nine out of nine sold out performances. Wow! It was an honor to be in our representation of such an iconic show. I loved the Wizard of Oz when I was little, but as I grew older, I lost touch with it.. Doing this show renewed the story for me... It changed from a fairytale, to something more real-life than I had imagined. Of course I don't regularly go strolling with a scarecrow, a tinman, and a lion, but I do feel as though I am about to start on my very own journey down the yellow brick road. College life is about as foreign to me as Oz is to Dorothy. I'm going to be on my own for the first time in my life. Luckily, Dorothy meets the "best friends anybody ever had" along the way on her journey. It's funny though, because really the three friends from Oz are the representation of her friends in her real life. At the end, Dorothy says goodbye to them in Oz, but when she awakens from her dream she is back home in Kansas. Back home where her friends were all along. I feel as if this show was sort of symbolic in a way. My goodbye... but also an everlasting reminder that "there's no place like home" and I will miss you all very much. It's not goodbye really, because I know I always have to power to come back within me. Art imitates life sometimes.

Ah, and how about a health update? A few weeks ago, I was having some pretty painful backpain so I went to an outpatient clinic where they tested me for a kidney stone. After some tests, a week of waiting, a cat scan, another 4-5 days of waiting, we determined I did in fact have a kidney stone. It was strange though because the backpain was the only symptom, and it has gone away. A few days later, I go to the eurologist for an appointment, and... whaddaya know, he gets called into emergency surgery and we have to postpone my appointment. All of this in the midst of opening week of Oz! We rescheduled for the following Monday, and luckily I finally got in! So, kidney stone? Yes. A pretty big kidney stone? Yeah. I guess this is my punishment for not hydrating with enough water all these years. It was bound to happen. Silly me. However, there was one twist we weren't expecting. My kidney is abnormally swollen/enlarged.
This kind of has the doc worried a bit because we aren't sure what caused it. Here is what my kidneys look like:

See that really big organ-looking-thing on the left? That's the bad kidney. The smaller one on the right is what it should look like and what my undamaged one looks like.
First order of business: Get rid of the stone. How? A procedure called lithotripsy. Basically they put me to sleep, inject me with dye, locate the stone, and then blast me with sonic waves to break it up and dissolve the stone. No incisions, and pretty simple. Amazing I think. It's got a 90% success rate and should work. The only thing that could hinder the process of breaking it up is my bum, swollen kidney. But we'll look on the brightside for now :D I'm having that done the morning of August 8th... well, tomorrow morning!
Next order of business: Find out why my bum kidney is bum. The doc said it could be something I was born with or something that has developed over the last few years. The possibilities are numerous I suppose. We'll just have to find out! Don't worry though folks, this is no life-threatening thing. You can live without one kidney, ya know!

I really want to start the run-down of my Europe trip but I think I will wait until tomorrow. I've already made this long enough I think! Please, chat me up. Get a blog! Or just comment below. Or facebook me! Thanks Jordan Campell!