Wednesday, November 12, 2008

My Latest Project ( completely off topic!)

I've been absent from the blog scene for almost a month now. I'd like to say that I've been off busy feeding the hungry or curing cancer in that time, but my time was spent much more selfishly. I was working on passing a huge kidney stone and recovering. What follows is a tale of my trip through hell.

A little history... I had my first kidney stone about ten years ago. Withing 8 hours of the excruciating pains beginning, I had passed a small stone that looked like something off a sticker bush. My next stone was about two years later. Another small stone, but while it was thankfully smooth, it hurt just as bad and took about forty-eight hours to pass.

A couple years after that, I'm in the emergency room again with another kidney stone. This one hurt for about five days and it never did seem to come out. Every year or two since then I would have to go the the emergency room in extreme pain, but nothing ever came out. I was told about five years ago that I had a decent size stone just about to drop into my bladder. This sounded great because once they get to your bladder, they don't hurt anymore. The problem, by the way, with kidney stones is pretty much all in the getting from your kidney to your bladder. A year later I was told that this was probably a different stone, but what do you know, it was still "just almost into your bladder".

A year ago I went into the emergency room and they did an MRI and said (you guessed it) I had a pretty big stone, but it was almost into my bladder, "it should pass fine". Now we come to this year. I went to the same ER as last year. The Dr. compared this years MRI to last years and said basically, "WTF"? It was the exact same stone... I told him of course it was, I haven't actually passed a stone since 2001. He had no idea why the Dr. last year didn't send me straight to a urologist? The stone, according to the MRI from this year and last, was over 6mm in size. Generally anything under 4mm is expected to pass. Anything over six millimeters is pretty much impossible he told me. So, since I didn't have a blocked kidney (so no emergency procedure) I had to live out the next couple days on pain pills that didn't really work until I could see a urologist. I convinced him that I could not live in that kind of pain for a week until he could do something, so he managed to bump me up in line for a Lithotripsy procedure. So a couple days later I go to the hospital and they put under and shoot sonic waves through me and try to bust up the stone into smaller passable pieces. This was more important than ever because the flat x-rays had shown the stone to be closer to 10mm! I go home to recover and have less extreme pain, though still a bit of discomfort from the procedure (though not invasive, it's quite jarring to your innards). A week later I go to follow up with my Dr and he has me x-rayed again... great news... the stone didn't break up after all, the Lithotripsy just sonically knocked it down into my bladder. My Dr had a look on his face that you never want to see you Dr have and said, "I don't know if you can pass that... I don't know how it ever got into your bladder". But, he said I should give it a shot and if nothing came out he'd go in after in a month or two... ew. Well, almost a week later and started having pain when going to the restroom. I'll tell you that the last few inches a kidney stone travels is usually painless, a short break in the stream when you are peeing and there it is. This took all day to come out and hurt like hell.

After trying to come out for years, I present to you, the stone.



Yea, close to 13mm! And they said anything over 6mm wouldn't pass, ha! I win! Inner Geek 1, Stone 0! In your face tiny hell-stone!


On another off topic front, my darling Inner Geek Lover has been to the Dr and it appears she is with child! I'm not sure how this happened, but I'm it's all quite medical. We are very excited as she was told previously by her physician that she could not have any more children. Look for another off topic blog on or about the 27th of June next year!

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate all the folks who read my blog and I promise you, work will be starting up again on the Reaver. Between recovery and trying to make up for lost time where I work, I've had no time for the beast. I've little chance of ever catching up completely on all my friends blogs, but I'm going to give it my best. I'll talk to you all later!
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