More about the Kidney Stone

Well now that the ordeal is finally all done, I should explain all that happened.

Well since the last posting regarding my kidney stone I've had quite the exciting time. I didn't take any of the pain killers that they had given me, but Sunday night I really wished I had. Saturday I had a couple of small pain attacks, but nothing too bad. But Sunday night I got hit hard again. I was really worried. The ER doctor on Wednesday said the stone was at the end of my ureter, near the bladder. That kinda pain wasn't good. I was worried that it was blocked. I had the ambulance take me to the emergency room again. John met me there and kept me company as they ran bloodwork and another CT scan.

This scan showed that the stone was up close to my kidney. Ok so did the first doctor not know what he was doing? The stone couldn't have gone back up. This doctor sent me home again and told me to take my pain killers. That night was a night of pain and not much sleep. I got sick a few times. I lost my dinner twice. Once before I headed to the emergency room and then again later after I was home, having ate again. I spent as much time in the bathroom as I did in bed. Finally about 3am or so I grabbed one of the couch coushns and laid down in the bathroom. That worked. I was feeling ok in the morning so I took some more pain killers and slept much of the day away.

Tuesday morning I woke up and I was feeling pretty good. I had some cran-grape juice, but nothing to eat. I was feeling like I could go to work, so I drove in.

About half way to work I started to feel the pain again. It started at a small and manageable level and then began to slowly increase. By the time I got to the parking garage I was in some pretty bad pain. I parked my car and didn't get any further than that.

I called up to the office and I had some water brought down to me. It wasn't too long before I got sick. Luckily I had the sense to get out of my car before that. Oddly after being sick the pain often subsided. I was taken home and I tried to rest, but for the next two hours I was in terrible pain. Finally after vomiting nothing but water, with some blood in it, I called the urologists number that the ER doctor had given me. They looked at the CT scans and what had been going on and quickly determined I needed to go in for surgery. The prognosis was that the stone was stuck and was causing swelling of the ureter and surrounding tissue near the kidney. That was what the pain was from rather than the movement of the stone itself. Luckily after that last vomit the pain subsided and the pain killers did their work for the rest of the day.

Wednesday (Sept 24th) morning I had to get up early. I had to be at the surgery center at 6:30 am. This wasn't too bad. I did the normal paperwork stuff and laid in my bed with my IV waiting for the surgery. The anesthesiologist gave me a couple pills to help reduce queezyness after the operation. After that I don't remember anything else until I woke up after surgery.

The procedure was to be: The were going to take a double J stent and push the stone back into my kidney where they'd then use Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy to blast the stone into sand, which would pass much easier. Unfortunately when they went to find it they couldn't see it on the scopes (whatever they used) to blast it. They sent me to the urologists office. They told me to come back in the next morning early and have another CT scan done.

More to come later...