Kidney stones are excruciatingly painful, but they’re also fairly common, and their symptoms are more or less easily identifiable. Nonetheless, Eggers characteristically jumps to the worst-case scenario, assuming that he must be dying of AIDS, an assumption that is admittedly less unlikely than his first thought, which is that he has been shot. The entire experience is important because it suddenly puts him in an unfamiliar position. Although he’s accustomed to tragedy and hardship, he isn’t used to being the one who actually needs physical help from others. Toph proves his maturity and responsibility when he makes dinner for Eggers, a sign of just how much he has grown up since the opening of the book, when he wasn’t old enough to even open the fridge to see for himself what there was to eat.