Fortune And Glory

Sometime Thursday morning, I believe the stone either made it’s way to the end of the ureter or into the bladder itself.

Oddly, it didn’t appear when I peed a couple of times during the day.

Finally, after taking a #2, as I was about to flush, I saw a dark spot in the bowl (above the water line) about where my wee wee would be pointing, and discovered the stone.

4mm, as the doctor told me it was.

I washed it off and put it in a sample jar that the nurse had given to me as I was discharged from the ER on Saturday night.

I then drove it to my primary doctor’s office and dropped it off to on of her associates.

I’m glad that this one is over, and I hope it’s even longer between stones.

Thanks again to those who expressed their concerns.

Saturday morning!  I’m up and taking in a soccer match, and I’m having a light breakfast of cottage cheese and a waffle.

The kidney pain returned.

For the third day in a row.

I texted my sisters about which hospital ER I need to go to under my health plan.  They texted back that I should call a nurse on my health insurance card, and that I should ask about urgent care.

A phone call later, and texts from one sister that she’d be over to pick me up, and I was on my way to UCSF’s urgent care.

It took a couple of hours, but I finally saw a doctor, after giving a urine sample.  She confirmed that I had a kidney stone (blood in urine) and had me have a blood draw to check that everything was fine.  She also prescribed flomax for my condition.

An hour later, I found out that it wasn’t, my creatinine levels were high compared to a recent test in July.  So I was sent across the street to the hospital’s emergency room for an IV to try to get those levels down, and to get a CT scan on my kidneys.

The waiting room time was about 4 hours, and then another hour or so lying on a hospital bed in the hallway near the CT scan room.

I was given a saline drip, then brought in for the scan, and then got a shot of toredol in my IV.

I finally had the doctor arrive to tell me what was up, that the stone should pass on it’s own.  She gave me a prescription for some other pain med (which I may not need) and this time they gave me a strainer and sample container for the stone when it passes.

After I was discharged my other sister picked me up and we picked up some cranberry juice and chicken broth from Safeway.  That’s when I remembered that I forgot to pick up my multi-tool from the security desk, which was confiscated when I arrived to the waiting room.

We went back to pick it up, then went home, where my sister prepared some of the broth and cranberry juice for me.

I feel fine now, probably better once I get the new prescription.

Thanks again to my sisters who I never listen to about health matters, until it does matter.

After many years of not showing any symptoms of kidney stones, I had an incident.

I was sitting at lunch when I felt the first dull pain.  It slowly increased in intensity until both of the people sitting with me noticed that something was wrong with me.

One of them correctly identified it as a kidney stone.  She said that I should go see I doctor.  I got up and walked to the bathroom to pee.

When I got back to the table, I decided that it was time to leave, so I did.

I passed by my supervisor’s office to let her know what was up, and then collected my stuff at my cube, and left.

Luckily I drove in today.

Unluckily there was a fender bender right in front of the exit of the parking garage.  Arrgh.

A couple of minutes of the two cars moving out of the way and I was on my way home.

Since it was midday there was light traffic on the freeway home, but the pain started to ebb and flow, as it does.

I parked in the garage, stumbled upstairs, changed and lay down on my bed.

I got up a couple of times to drink some water and try to get comfortable in sitting and standing positions, but lying down seemed to be the thing I needed to do.

I lay on my left side as I figured gravity might assist the stone’s movement in my right kidney.

I kept having to move every few minutes as what felt comfortable one moment was painful the next, until finally I fell asleep.

A couple of hours I woke up, pain free.

I found the container that I used to pee in when I first had kidney stones and used it.  No stone to be found.

I feel okay.  I’ll probably go back to work tomorrow, barring any incidents between now and tomorrow morning.