Current mood:	jubilant
Entry tags:	fucking kidney stones

The Kidney Stone Saga
The bf had a kidney stone. I say had, past tense, because it doesn't exist anymore; however, he's still getting treated for things related, hence the saga part.

It started with him having pain in his gut. He thought it was just a stomachache that was lasting an incredibly long time, then he had blood in his urine and woke up at 2 am in agony, so I trucked him over to the Emergency Room and they had a look at him. By 5 in the morning they had X-rayed and CAT scanned him and determined that he had a kidney stone. At that point they let me in to see him (it has a nice waiting room at least) and they explained that it was 5.3mm large and he should contact Urology. They also gave him a warning that it was probably going to hurt more than giving birth and they prescribed him some Vicoden (sp?) for it.

We left happy, great service, nice people, etc. He scheduled with Urology and they told him they might need to do surgery to get it out, explained the procedures to him, etc, all very nice. This is the point where things started to go wrong. They scheduled him for surgery in a month and a half and basically said that was the soonest they could do it, suck it up until then. He went home not particularly happy but not unhappy either. The next day I got a call at work, he was asking me to come home because he was in a lot of pain. When I got there I found him curled up in a fetal ball shaking, sobbing in agony, and throwing up. He told me he had tried to take the painkillers but he kept throwing them up so they weren't doing any good. This was in the middle of a blizzard and I called Urology, they dicked around for a while and then told us to go to the ER. I went to get the car and when I got back the bf told me he had gotten another call from Urology saying not to go to the ER, to wait for them to call back. You have to understand here that he was still curled over in pain and when I say he "said" what I really mean is "gasped out between sobs". Eventually Urology called back and told us again to go to the ER.

I brought him over to the ER, they IV'd some painkillers into him, and told him he should go see Urology. He told them he had seen Urology the day before, and they asked if he had been given a filter to strain his urine with in case the stone came out, to which he said no. At this point they expressed surprise but didn't give him a filter, prescribed him some Percosets, anti-nausea pills, and anti-nausea suppositories in case he couldn't keep the pills down.

This began the more than a month of hell in which I no longer had a boyfriend, I had a half awake stuporous zombie wandering around the apartment. A lot of the time he was drugged up, dazed, writhing in horrible pain and agony, or knocked out from the painkillers. We waited not-so-patiently for his surgery date, and halfway through the wait got a call from his urologist who had heard about when his surgery appointment was. This urologist was shocked that they had scheduled him to essentially cool his heels for a month and a half waiting for this surgery and moved the appointment up by half a month, which was good.

He went to the surgery and after the surgery there was some confusion because the day before he had told me he would call me when his surgery was over because they were going to hold him for an extra hour or two afterwards to make sure he was ok. Unfortunately, he didn't recall saying that so I was waiting around for the call that never came. When I actually did get a call, it was a somewhat irate nurse asking if I was the person who was supposed to be picking him up, and was I coming or not?

When I got there, he was in a lot of pain and we ended up staying there for an additional hour while they drugged him up some more. They also gave us a lot of informational paperwork with a sheet saying, "Call our doctor immediately if any of the following symptoms occur" and prescribed him more painkillers.

What they did in the surgery was basically jam a laser up his penis and use it to blast his kidney stone into tiny pieces so that he could pass these through regular urination. They also shoved a stent up there, which is the equivalent of a curly straw--one end is curled up and stays in the bladder, the other end is curled up to hold it in the kidney.

A couple of notes here:

• Although he was asked many times through the course of his urology and ER visits whether or not anyone had given him a strainer for his urine, no one ever offered him one


• After the surgery they asked him if he had been prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection, and when he said no they commented that usually you're given antibiotics but no one ever offered him any, even after asking

They sent us home, and I thought he would just be out for the night so I puttered around downstairs. It turned out he was only out for an hour, woke up in excruciating pain, tried to yell for me but I couldn't hear him, crawled to the top of the stairs, and threw a pillow down them to get my attention. It was pretty bad, he was in a ton of pain and there wasn't anything I could do about it. One of the warning signs was large clots of blood in the urine and he had those, so I called the doctor and the doctor said it was "just a warning sign" and if he had a fever then to take him to the ER.

For the next week until the scheduled appointment for him to have the stent removed, he was out of work and basically at home in a lot of pain some more. He said it was like the kidney stone, except now it always hurt all the time. He continued to bleed for more than 3 days (another warning sign) was in a lot of pain in spite of the pain killers (yet another thing to call the doctor for) and had large blood clots in his urine (yup, another thing on the list they gave us), and yet each time we called they'd ask, "Does his urine look more like burgundy wine or tomato juice?" And then they'd tell us it was no big deal, and blow us off. At one point, he was in so much pain he was throwing up in the bathroom, he missed the bag/toilet and puked on the floor, I called the doctor, and the doctor got all pissed at me because I wasn't the patient. She gave me this, "Well can't you just take him the phone?" when he had told me to call and talk to them for him, since you know, he was lying on the floor.

Of course, by this point they had finally given him a strainer but now he has huge blood clots in his urine and so the filter keeps getting clogged with blood clots and it's generally a very bad and messy scene.

Friday comes along, and he heads to his appointment to get his curly straw taken out. The doctor there tells him he has a urinary tract infection and she'll have to give him antibiotics for it. Because of the urinary tract infection, she can't take the straw out, but she'd be able to take it out Tuesday so schedule an appointment. Not only that, she tells him that even if he didn't have a urinary tract infection she wouldn't take it out anyways, because he had scheduled the wrong appointment and procedure. That's right, HE had scheduled the wrong procedure, because he has a lot of control over that and should know exactly what procedure and type of stent he's got in. What. The. Fuck.

He goes to schedule and appointment and the receptionist tells him Wednesday. He asks for an earlier appointment and the Wednesday opening magically disappears and now the soonest opening is Friday.

He goes back to the Doctor to ask for refills on his pain and nausea prescriptions, since he'd be waiting an extra week to have the straw pulled out and she refills his painkillers but not his anti-nausea pills. Instead she tells him to use Benadryl for nausea. Benadryl! The antihistamine allergy medication!

He was pretty unhappy about this, so was I, so I called and bitched to patient services on his behalf, but of course they didn't do anything to fix the problem. On goes another week of pain and suffering.

Finally, on Friday (today) he goes back in and I just got a call that the straw is finally out! The next 24 hours aren't going to be pleasant they say and he's supposed to drink a lot of water, but finally, the end of a 2.5 month saga of pain and horrible medical treatment.

Woooooooooooot!