One week ago, I was experiencing excruciating pain thanks to a kidney stone attack that lasted—on and off—for four days. If you’ve never had a kidney stone, be thankful. It is as close as a man can come to experiencing childbirth.

Now that the stone has passed and the trauma is a fading memory, what sticks out in my mind is the issue of health care information technology. I’ll explain in a moment.

One joke about journalism is that the definition of news is anything that affects an editor. I guess the definition of a blogworthy item is that it is something that affects a blogger.

I have been covering for several months the effort by business organizations to get Congress to approve legislation that would usher in widespread adoption of personal digital health records. A bill has been approved by a Senate committee.

Things have been moving more slowly in the House. But earlier this month, two members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a bill. Still, we’re a long way from seeing final legislation that can be sent to the president.

But for me, health care IT became a personal issue when I arrived at a local Washington hospital after the onset of my kidney stone attack last week. I have high regard for the service provided by the hospital’s emergency department. It’s where I’ve gone for each of the three stones I’ve had while living in Washington.

So, I am not going to name the facility because I don’t want it to be Googled after I make the criticism I’m about to outline. I will say, however, that this is the same hospital that treated Ronald Reagan when he was wounded in an assassination attempt.

First, the good news: When you’re doubled over in pain from a kidney stone, there’s nothing better than getting an injection of pain killers shortly after you arrive at the hospital. I commend the facility I visited for quickly alleviating my pain.

However, before that happened, I was asked to fill out forms in the waiting room. There is no worse request while you are writhing in pain from a kidney stone. I was a bit miffed because my primary doctor works for the same medical institution. I wish they could have just accessed my files on a shared, secure server within the hospital system.

It was equally discouraging, while my pain persisted, to have one of the emergency doctors tell me that the hospital had no record of my two previous visits for treatment of kidney stones.

That made me think: Perhaps health IT advocates are on to something when they say that each of us should have our medical records put on a chip or a flash drive that we can take to each hospital and doctor we visit. No more forms. No more blank stares from  doctors regarding our medical history.

The next time I cover health IT legislation, I’ll have a whole new context from which to view the issue.