Hello Live Journal

Hey live journal, sorry for neglecting you. In posting and indeed in checking out what all my people are posting on here... Hmmm, will have to try harder.

Some things I have been up to: Today I went way out east to my girlfriend's brother's engagement party. Which featured, amongst other things, a huge barbecued steak :-) Their place almost burnt down back in February, it was freaky to see an entire burnt forest about 15 metres from their house!

Back to Hospital

So, after my fun trip to the emergency room a few weeks back, I ended up back in the same hospital a few days after that.

We talked to a kidney surgeon - that's not his exact title! - who said a stone of the size I had wouldn't pass by itself and that he should get in there and poke at it, possibly laser it(!) This was on a Wednesday night, he lined me up to check in the next morning so he could work on me in the morning. I was to get a general anaesthetic, so I wasn't allowed to eat for at least eight hours beforehand. This is hard for a chap who likes to eat!

So we rocked up at the hospital the next morning, hungry already. We (Deb and I) waited in a patients waiting area for a while, and... the power went out in the whole building, at least for a moment. Until the generators kicked in. Probably not a good thing in a hospital! Anyway, a while later, my surgeon came down and said that all elective surgery had been suspended, which I thought was fair enough if you're running on backup power. Seems the whole of Richmond was down. But he got me checked in and into one of them stupid hospital gowns (what is up with them - talk about an undignified piece of clothing!)

My surgeon had to be at another hospital in the early afternoon, but promised he'd try and get to me before then. It was not to be, I waited around the pre-surgery area for ages when he came back again and said it's have to be the early evening, and that I could have some lunch! Some sandwiches appeared which I was very happy about - then another nurse come racing back to tell me they might actually be able to work on me then, so the sandwiches where whisked away again! Then she came back yet again to say no, it wasn't going to happen that morning, so they started trying to find me a bed. And I got some more food - yay.

I spent a very dull afternoon in a hospital bed. Deb stayed with me for a while, and we saw enough of the new Star Trek movie to get her interested in it.

I ended up twittering all afternoon, much to the amusement of my followers. There was even briefly a hashtag about my kidney stone!

The nurses in the ward were somewhat surprised to see me, they weren't expecting me till the much later. And somewhere in the move - which I did under my own steam - my file and my xrays went missing! Completely! They scoured the whole building, it sounded like, looking for them.

My friend Geoff dropped in in the early evening, and we swapped kidney stories, which was cool.

And eventually they wheeled me downstairs, and into the theatre.

It was funny going under this time. I've had general anaesthetics before, hence my lack of concern. Usually they'll get you to count to ten or something before they pump in the drugs, to see how you're going. This time the lovely anaesthetist put a band around my arm, and I vaguely saw her doing something with a largish cylinder of a milky liquid, and the IV that was already in my hand... I was chatting away and then... nothing... I was asleep.

I woke up actually quite some time later - at least two hours must have elapsed. My surgeon was by my bed telling me relatively good news. The stone had gone by the time he got in there. Sometime between getting xrayed and CT scanned on the Tuesday night, and getting into surgery on Thursday evening, I had passed the damn thing. And I hadn't even noticed - which suggests that it may have broken up of it's own accord, or the pandiene forte I was on made me not notice. He poked around inside of me, all the way up to my kidney, just to make sure. Oh, did I mention he did all this via my urethra? Which is good and bad - good 'cause there's no incisions, bad because it's rather a lot to do to a delicate region of one's anatomy!

I spent a groggy night with a catheter in inserted all the way into my bladder, which was removed with some pain but to my relief the next morning. I also got a huge breakfast, which I ate all of. They also gave me a pile of medicines. Something to make my urine less acidic, something to help with "muscle control", a course of antibiotics, on top of the pain killers and anti inflammatories I'd gotten a few days before.

Deb came and took me home, and I spent a few days lazing about, which was nice, and dragged myself to work on the Monday. I've been making a point of staying very well hydrated since!