I Don't Like Mondays

(really, have no problem with Mondays, but am listening to this for no apparent reason as I type, and it seems to fit. Go ahead and open it in a new tab and listen as you read.)

I know I've made a couple of references over the last few months to having kidney stones for the second time in 12 years (am shooting for 22 this next time...), but honestly, I wasn't that sure it was what was going on, because as dim as my memory was I remember it being more than just very uncomfortable-to-moderately painful--which is all it had gotten to. But my urologist had a CT scan performed, and did a cystoscopy a couple weeks back and found "a really big one, maybe two" stuck along the way. And don't think a cystoscopy isn't twice as much fun as it sounds like.

And then the next day that pain I remembered, that Life Changing pain, the pain that let me know with a certainty no CT scan could ever give, kicked in. Spent a few hours in the ER on some sort of cocktail of miracle drugs, thanks to the insistence of TLomL. But that/those little sucker(s) have stuck around.

Fast-forward a week and a half, and I'm back for a follow-up. We're supposed to talk about "surgical options"--for me there is no option, it's not a matter of "if," but of "when." The good doctor actually tried to convince me that it was the right move--as I'm sure he has to do that a lot, but after 3.5 months, I didn't need that. He started to get the picture and asked how next week worked for me--I said fine, unless he was free that afternoon.

Then he really got the picture.

So, assuming everything goes according to schedule, about right now, I'll be well under the spell of a general anesthetic so that I can undergo the following four things: a ureteroscopy, a laser lithotripsy, stone extraction (that's the good part), and probably the insertion of a stint.

At first I was just happy that it was ending--after a couple of hours I started to get a little worried and am not so much looking forward it. Perhaps...just perhaps, I shouldn't have looked up those fun words on google, eh? (especially the article with nice color photos). With my liver biopsy 2 yrs ago...I was just stupid to not think it through, but in retrospect, it was good I didn't think about the fact that part of an organ was being ripped out. But not thinking it through spared me a lot of fretting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried worried, just mildly-concerned worried. That, and, not-at-all-looking-forward-to-the-recovery worried.

If I don't stop rambling soon, the whole thing'll be over before you get a chance to finish reading. See you on the flip side :)