Dreadful... no. The dreadful part was that on August 17, Beer, visiting me on his vacation, watched me literally push the stone from under my ear to where that little "lump" is in the first pic. The ENT I saw on Sept 5 did not believe me and was rather arrogant about it. After an MRI on Oct 26, during my ENT visit on Nov 5, he showed me the pics on his PC and announced to me HE had discovered it was a stone. I said, "That's what I fuckin told you." The nurse left the room.

It got worse and he did a full parotidectomy on Dec 14... only after I ended up in emerg a second time.

Now... I had no where near the pain of a kidney stone. I had a full parotidectomy on Dec 14, which went fine. Much better than the partial on the right side in 2005... that was pain for months... but still not near the pain of a kidney stone.