Kate’s Kidney Stone

  Kate awoke early Friday morning with a pain in her kidney. The pain wasn’t intolerable (about a “4” on a scale from 1 to 10), so she got ready and began the drive to her office.  She texted and told us that the pain was starting to get worse and that she might start driving for the hospital; a few minutes later she let us that she had gone into the ER.

  A CT scan showed that there was a kidney stone in the ureter, but that it wasn’t obstructive.  It was approx. 5mm which is a little bit more than the size of a BB.  Because of its large size I began saying she had a kidney boulder.

  By the way, this is her third kidney stone and she’s never been able to pass one of the stones in the past.  The doctor said that there was only a 20% chance that she’d be able to pass it.

At the ER

  The urologist couldn’t really do anything over the weekend, but give her pain medicine, so they gave Kate the choice of leaving the hospital and then coming back next week to have the kidney stone busted up through lithotripsy.  Well, who wants to spend the weekend in a hospital?  They gave her some more pain medicine through her IV and gave her prescription for Vikodin.

 

  After picking up the meds we went to our Civil War dance lesson, but only the three us boys danced; by the time that we left Kate was in a lot of pain  (7-8) and while we drove to the hospital her pain went to a 10.  After signing in at the ER her pain went back down to a 4 and it was a good thing too, because it was an hour before we got a room.  After being in the room for more than half an hour nobody had come into the room and her pain went back up to a 10.  We buzzed for help, but I’m sure it was close to 20 minutes before they got a nurse into the room and administer her meds.

Kate stayed in the ER for a few hours early Saturday morning before she was moved to a hospital room.  On Saturday they put her on Dilauded for pain, but it made her vomit for most of the day.

Bad IV job

    The picture to the left shows how poorly one of the nurses put in an IV.  The blood soaked through a bath towel, a blanket, a sheet and the fitted sheet. It had even taken her 20 minutes to do.

    Kate was switched to Perocet and she didn’t feel nauseous from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon when she was dismissed from the hospital with pain medication.

Leaving the Hospital

   She took Percocet for pain on Monday and she had the lithotripsy surgery done early Tuesday morning.  Other than the general anesthesia, the surgery wasn’t bad and they used subsonic waves to bust up the stone.

Recovering from anesthesia