THE STONES!!! THE STONES!!!

Back in February I got hit with another case of KIDNEY STONES. This time it was a 6mm bugger stuck in the ureter (tube between the kidney & the bladder) that came out of the blue to wreak pain-inducing havok on my insides. I met a great Urologist at the Emergency Room who booked me into a rushed NON-INVASIVE SHOCKWAVE LITHOSCOPY procedure the next day, basically, they blasted the stone with ultrasound waves and over the next week, I had to pass the remnants. Still painful but much better than trying to pass a 6mm stone through a 1mm tube.

While prepping for that procedure, I had a number of x-rays taken on my insides and much to everyone's surprise they located another stone, a much larger 9mm stone lodged in my kidney. This sucker was too big to move on it's own, so it would have to be blasted as well but at a later date.

Well that date has come.

Last Friday I was admitted to the hospital for my second SHOCKWAVE procedure. The difference being, this one is a larger stone and it's still up in my kidney rather than being more than halfway down the track in my ureter! Meaning, I am going to have to pass the remnants of this monster stone from beginning to uncomfortable end! The procedure itself it quite simple:

1. Get hooked up to an IV
2. Sit on a giant plastic bottomed table that's wet (it helps with the waves)
3. Find the stone on Ultrasound
4. Get some "happy juice" injected into your IV
5. Lock your body in place so you don't move
6. 60 minutes of tapping against your kidney
7. Voila! Finished & wheeled into recovery

Overall it went well and by the early afternoon I was at home. The weekend was bearable (I compare the discomfort to being hit in the kidneys with a sledgehammer) but much better than the pain of passing a full stone, I can take comfort in that.

I am now of meds to help with discomfort and another one to help minimize the creation of future stones so we will see how that goes but for the moment, I am almost stone free!!!