I have many imaginary friends, you'll have to be more specific... But there is one named Rocket... Although, he is a forty foot tall mech with a talking rabbit inside... I think his name is Rocket too... Or Rodney, it's hard to say, as he has a bit of a lisp... I believe they call him rocket because he likes eating at Johnny Rocket's burger restaurants... Mostly from the parking lot... Only once he sat inside and that didn't turn out so well. I could be imaginary too... It's hard to tell... Reality can be quite surreal at times.
I have a long model making story that is kidney stone related... I'll try and whittle it down quickly...
A number of years back, when I first was diagnosed with kidney stones, I was working on a project to fabricate a series of laparoscopes... Being that they were going to be actually used in surgery, they had to be 100% perfect and they each had about $20,000 worth of tech inside... We had one shot to get it right with all twelve of them and we had no devices to check them out on as they were assembled... Part of which involved having the housing molded around the inner works. It was a super tight deadline and during it I got a really bad kidney stone, the day before we finished, I passed it... Despite that I managed to hold up my end of the project and we finished just a few hours short of the client coming to pick them up... I should probably have mentioned that these were no ordinary laparoscopes... They had slightly bulkier handles, like a very fluidly shaped phaser, but with an extremely long stainless steel nozzle/shaft... Almost two and a half feet long, probably twice normal length. We did a lot of medical prototypes, so it wasn't that odd and I never really gave any thought to its exact use. We finished up, cleaned them up and placed them in their custom cases. And when the fellow in charge of the project, actually a doctor who co-founded the company we were doing this for, showed up, he tested each one with a special device he brought along... Tense moments passed as he placed each one back in its case... When he finished the last one, his demeanor totally changed for very calm and serious to what was almost a dancing Christmas elf... They all passed perfectly and he practically hugged each of us... He was in a hurry and was off to a trade show or something and had to catch a plane and after a billion thanks, just as he was leaving, I remembered I never knew what type of procedure they were for... so I asked... "Oh, sorry... " he said standing in the doorway... "They are for removing very large kidney stones in obese or large patients, where lithotripsy is not an option..." As he closed the door behind him. I'm pretty sure both of my kidney shrieked in terror and curled up in a knot... Nobody claims to have heard it, but I'm told dog and cats throughout the neighborhood mewed and howled in fright... I'm pretty sure he could have thrown a liver and a spleen at me moments before and I'd just have been concerned about stains, but connecting those devices with kidneys and the momentary image of one of those steel tubes rooting about in and sucking things out of my kidney was way too clear and vivid.... I'm pretty sure I just stood there in that hallway, staring blankly at the door waving bye-bye to nobody as that movie played in my head for at least five minutes before my freind Keith poked me in the shoulder and asked if I was going to lunch.
Yeah... But I did have a lithotripsy procedure a few years back, I was lucky because my friend who is a doctor expedited the whole thing to one week... After three weeks of hell, peeing blood for a day or two was not so bad... Luckily, it hasn't been needed again so far.
And before I cap this long post, I have to add... Two days after my last post up there, I passed a pretty big stone... It wasn't so bad because it actually didn't stick much on the way to the bladder... But a few days later I had to sculpt a kidney for one of my daughter's class projects... I really know way more about kidneys than I ever wanted to.
