Updates

I know. I've been incredibly lame in the posting department this week. But we seemed to have tons going on (I don't even know what anymore...) and then I had my kidney stone procedure on Friday, which meant I had to do my colon prep on Thursday. Blech.

The colon prep did not go well. Mainly because I had to follow a very tight regimen of a schedule, which included no food (the entire day before!), and drinking 8oz of water every hour on the hour. Plus the dreaded "drink" and some pills later to follow up. By 7p, I was bloated and felt like I was about to vomit (which wasn't the purpose of all this) b/c of all the water I had taken in. By 9p, I couldn't do it anymore. I did not drink my last 8oz...I just couldn't. And the stuff didn't start "working" until 11p, which meant I was up all night, the night before my procedure that I had to be at the hospital for at 6am. In fact, when I left the house at 6, I was still going.. Needless to say I was not a happy camper. And I was worried that this time again, I wouldn't be completely cleaned out and they wouldn't be able to see...again.

Anyway, so get there at 6 or so. Register, etc etc... Did the Xray and everything looked good to go (yay!). The blood draw was not so fun. And why oh why did they need like 4-5 vials of my blood??? I still don't know. The IV was much worse. Took 3 veins and lots of digging. By the time she was done, I couldn't even feel my hand anymore. It was numb.

So, then they wheeled me back and onto a table that looked sort of like an Xray table, with a hole in the middle covered with glass. Underneath that little square of glass was water, which they would later send the shockwaves through. So they had to line me up (wherever the kidney stone they were aiming for was) on the glass part of the table. And then out I went. I was wheeled back just after 8a and I remember waking up in the same room, just after 10a.

I was completely out of it. I felt very groggy. I know its mostly normal, but I've never felt this out of it from anesthesia before. And it wasn't getting better. So, they took me to recovery (which I don't remember) and Brad was there. I spent the next couple of hours trying to wake up and not feel so light-headed. I was very nauseous as well. I hadn't eaten at this point in like, 40 some odd hours, they had taken 5 vials of blood, cleaned me out, and knocked me out. All this didn't bode well for me feeling so great afterwards. I was supposed to be released, but when I couldn't make it to the bathroom on my own, they told me to just rest a while and that I would be staying till at least 1p, to see if I felt better. They gave me some more anti-nausea medicine and so I rested (Brad said I napped...I don't think I did). Afterwards, I lied and told them I felt better so I could go home. ;P I wasn't totally lying, but I still felt pretty bad. I couldn't see very good and felt very wobbly and very out of it. And now, about 4 hrs after the procedure, the pain was starting to come. My back was beginning to feel very sore and I just wanted to go home and rest in my own bed! And I thought surely I'd feel better if I could eat real food...not just crackers.

Apparently the doctor came out after the procedure (while I was still out) and talked with Brad. The stone he was first going for was so "dense" that he had to spend all of the shockwaves available on that one stone. He had been hoping he could work on more of them after the first was done (I have dozens on one side and 5-7 on the other). But no such luck. However, he does think he got the big one, which was the main concern. Now, I was sent home with a strainer to strain my urine to try to catch the remnants of the stone.

When I got home, I ate a real meal and laid on the recliner the rest of the day pretty much. I never really got to feeling too great. Even when I tried to sit at the table for dinner, I felt pretty woozy. I had never had anesthesia mess with me as much before! But, by today, that had worn off and now, just the soreness in my back remains. No such luck catching any stones yet. I really hope I do so they can find out the contents of one to know what's causing them (all my urine cultures...several of them!...came back normal levels for everything).

I can only add one picture here today. This is one I took of my hand bandaged up after the IV incident gone wrong. :P When she tried to put a piece of gauze on my hand with tape, it seeped through with blood in less than 2 seconds. So she quickly added a THICK layer of gauze, and then bandaged it around that several times. When I went to take it off (after I took this picture), the blood had seeped through to the very top layer! Crazy!

I'm hopeful the soreness in my back will continue to improve and I'll be going back in to my urologist this week to take another Xray to check to see how the stone looks and how I'm healing otherwise. More later...and hopefully more fun stuff next time. ;)