Today

 Well this morning I got up to wake John for work, and I couldn’t find him upstairs. I came downstairs to find him on the floor in the living room. I said, “Babe, it’s time to get up.” And he said, “I’ve been up all night.” At around 1 a.m. the kidney stone pain returned with a vengeance. Even after working a 16 hour day, he was unable to sleep through this pain. He got up off the ground and went to the bathroom. When he returned to the living room, he said, “I think I need to go to the emergency room again.” Within about 10 minutes, he was peeing blood and vomiting. I got a hold of his mother and she agreed to come watch the children (who were all miraculously still sleeping). We headed off to St. Luke’s.

Along the way we passed the Clinic of Urology and stopped in there to see if we could just be seen by a urologist. No deal…they said his pain needed to be under control first and foremost. We got to St. Luke’s and I dropped him at the emergency room doors and went to park the minivan. They quickly registered him and whisked him back to a room. I was still helping with his insurance information and by the time I got back to his room, they had an IV in his arm. Since they could tell what bad of shape he was in, they were not wasting any time. They quickly fed demoral (sp?) and morphine through his IV for the pain and then another medication to help with the nausea he was having. Very, very, very quickly his pain started to subside. They drew blood, made him pee in a cup, and then the waiting began, but it was actually fine because at least his pain was under control. He even dozed off until the nurse came to get him for his CT scan.

I took advantage of his snooze by getting logged onto my work’s remote access via the hospital’s wifi….I was actually able to get a ton done while we were there. Well eventually the doctor came back in to tell him that the scan showed he did still have a kidney stone and that it also showed “multiple stones” still in his kidneys (both kidneys). I asked him to define multiple and he said, “More than two.” He said he was going to contact the urologist on call and he left the room. When he returned he informed him that after his consultation by phone with the urologist, they believe that this is a second kidney stone. It is higher up in his urethra (stones DON’T travel backwards), and it is bigger than the first. It is believed that he either passed the first one without realizing it or that it is still floating around in his bladder not causing much trouble. This second one is still of a size that they believe it will pass on its own. They gave him a prescription for pain meds (the good stuff!) and for a medicine to help with passing the stone, and sent us home.