Good Vibrations

Here's the story. I delivered Keegen very early on a Saturday morning. We left the hospital Sunday evening. That next Wednesday morning i woke up feeling pretty crummy. My back hurt. I thought i must have a kidney infection? A UTI? Something was up. But i got through the morning. Keegen and I had an appointment with the lactation consultant at our ped's office. I think Doug must have stayed home with Bode.

The pain was sort of off then on. I made it through the appt when, at the end, i described my symptoms to Golda (the Lac Consultant and a physician's assistant) and asked what might be going on with me. She said it did sound like a kidney infection. She told me to call my OB and get seen right away. She brought me juice and water and snacks (from her own lunch!). Love that woman.

I went to my OB. He checked me out. Dipped my pee. Seemed to think it was nothing. I wasn't feeling much pain then so off i went to drive home.

The drive was awful. I remember about 7 minutes from home i was bawling. I was in such excruciating pain. I wasn't sure how i was going to continue driving. But i made it home and told Doug i really felt lousy. I went to lay down and the pain was worse than ever. We decided we should go to the ER. But. My mom was flying into the Colorado Springs airport pretty much right then and needed to be picked up (thank goodness she wasn't flying into Denver!). So i sent Doug to pick her up and as soon as they got home (took about an hour) we left the boys with her and off we went to the ER.

They saw me fairly quickly at the ER (considering we had to go to the yucky, long-wait downtown location since the new hospitals were still being built and considering i didn't have symptoms that were life-threatening (no heart problems or shortness of breath). Got into a bay (ZERO privacy. Sharing a filthy bathroom with drunks). Got all checked out and poked and prodded (not what i wanted after just having had a baby). Got a CT scan where they saw kidney stones moving right along in my ureter. At first i declined the morphine they offered. I was breastfeeding, right? I finally gave in and accepted as much as they wanted to give me and was able to tolerate things a little bit better. I was sent home with oral pain meds and waited.

And waited and waited. And finally Saturday i passed to jaggedy, good-sized stones. Ah, sweet relief.

I followed up with a urologist who suggested lithotripsy for the remainder of my stones. I had a bunch on both kidneys. But when i had an xray to pinpoint where the stones were, they couldn't see them and the doctor said i could wait and see instead. That it wasn't very likely the stones would move out of the kidneys and cause problems. So i went with that.

Well, here we are a little over two years later and i had my yearly physical. My primary doc heard something in my abdomen (a bruit) that shouldn't be there. So an abd sonogram was ordered and on the sono they saw something suspicious in my kidney (a growth? a mass? can't remember). So i had a CT scan where nothing suspect was seen except for stones. Anyway. This is a boring story, non? I saw my urologist and he said it was an 8mm stone (helloooo! the two i passed were 5mm and super-painful). He said if this one got out i probably wouldn't be able to pass it and would need more invasive surgery.

So i signed up for ESWL--extracorporal (outside the body) shockwave lithotripsy. Very spaceshippy sounding. I've been dreading it a little because it is done under a general anesthesia and i don't do well with just the simple IV sedation i've had for other things in the past (read: barfing). The description of the procedure itself didn't bother me (basically lay on a bag of fluid and the focus thousands of ultrasonic shockwaves at the big stone and any other stone nearby gets zapped too.

Yesterday was the big day. I had to be there at 6am so i took a cab to the hospital (didn't want to wake up my family or bother anyone else that early). Got all checked in and had another xray. And off i went to the OR. The anesthesiologist started my IV and said, "Here comes the sleepy medicine." The last thing i remember saying was, "Wow. Is it supposed to feel so achy?" and i was out.

I woke up in the PACU feeling so calm and really good but a little weird. I felt really heavy and couldn't focus my eyes but, well, GOOD. Poor lady next to me was waking up anxious and agitated and then there's me waking up like a Disney princess, all flowers and birds chirping! I said to my nurse, "Wow. That was the BEST NAP EVER!"

I was soon taken back to the outpatient post-op unit where Doug met me and i feasted on Ritz crackers and water and cheese. And i was ready to go. I wasn't even intubated with the general so that was nice.

Now i get to drink a gallon of water a day (for real) and lay on my head 3 times a day to coax the stone fragments out. Can you hear me telling my kids, "Play nice. Now Mom has to go stick her bum up in the air!" Ya. You know if you can't get a hold of me this week, that's what i'm doing...