January 1 - 3, 2021

[chochiyo_sama]

 

Friday, January 1, 2021

After Jack and Caleb brought me home from the ER last night, I had a joyous reunion with Peaches.  She was traumatized by all the firemen and ambulance crew that had come noisily into the house and took over.  A little cuddling and a couple of treats restored her to a more comfortable state.

At the ER, I was hooked up to a bunch of monitors, repeatedly questioned about Covid symptoms and exposure, and finally given pain meds (one of which was Fentanyl), anit-nausea medication (after having the dry heaves and puking up a lot of green shit into one of those puke bags that looks like a giant condom, and some med that I think was supposed to open up the tubes that run from the kidney to the bladder and beyond.  Eventually I was taken down to the CT machine and scanned and then required to provide another urine sample. 

My blood pressure, of course, was high.  Also, my oxygen levels kept going under 90%, which the nurse said was probably due to the Fentanyl as that suppresses your respiratory system, so I got to wear one of those oxygen tubes that stick up your nose. 

When the doctor, a small, slender man named Floy, spoke to me, he told me I had two large stones in my left kidney which he said were “a 9” and that it was doubtful that I would be able to pass them.  However, he said I was doing well.  He gave me the heart medication I had not taken before coming to the hospital (because I was puking) and gave me another dose of oxycontin.  Then he prescribed three medications—anti-nausea in pill form, 10 oxycontin pills, and the pill that widens the tubes.  The nurse went to get them for me from their after hours pill dispenser and printed off information on the medications and kidney stones for me to take home with me.  They told me to call the clinic on Monday and schedule an appointment with Urology for a follow up on the situation. 

They asked me who would be coming to pick me up.  Well, my options were limited.  My mother cannot see to drive at all, much less at 3 am.  Lily would be willing, but she has bad night blindness.  Which left my brother Jack, whom I hated to bother since he is a deep sleeper and has just survived a bunch of serious medical crap himself.  I was also worried he might be grumpy and/or groggy being woken up at 3 am. 

The nurse thought that was kinda funny and said, “I don’t mind waking him up!  I’ll call him.”  So she got his number and went off to call him.  I got dressed and gathered up my stuff and waited in the lobby.  It was doornail dead in the ER at that time. 

As soon as Jack and Caleb dropped me off and Peaches was comforted and petted, I went to bed.  I had to get up several times in the night with the urgent need to pee.  A couple of times, it was so intense that I had to scamper (as best I could with the walker) with pee running down my legs, leaving a trail of bloody urine from my bedroom to the bathroom. There was a lot of blood in the toilet in the night, but in the morning, there was no more blood.  And all day, there was no pain in my left side nor in my lower back.  I am really hoping this means that perhaps I passed those two stones during one of my forays to the bathroom in the middle of the night. 

I slept till noon.  I was exhausted.

I did not do too much on the first day of the new year.  I mopped the floor where I had made a mess in the night and got that all clean and sanitary again.  I ate a couple of cookies and made a bowl of chicken/barley/mushroom soup, but that’s all I ate.  I just did not feel like eating.

I also cleaned out my purse, looking for the information they had given me at the hospital.  Most of the day, I sat in my recliner and watched TV.

 

Saturday, January 2, 2021

Another day with no pain in the left side or low back—and no blood in the urine—at least nothing discernable with the naked eye.  I am praying hard that the stones are gone and I do not have to have another medical procedure to blast them to powder and suck them out.

I spent a significant amount of time catching up with the December 2020 DW journal entries.  I was a little hungry, but just did not feel like making anything to eat, so I had a couple slices of French bread with peanut butter and some of my left over apple dumpling.  The apple dumpling made me feel a little nauseated after I ate it, but it was pretty sweet.  Maybe that’s what caused me to feel a little gross.

It was a lovely cold but sunny day. 

 

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Another day without pain.  Yay.

I filled my pill caddy and ordered refills of Eloquis and my prescription of lancets.  Later, I washed the dishes in my sink and fought with a hard, crusty spot of burnt sugar on the bottom of the roaster I had made the apple dumpling in. It has been soaking for days but is still not loosened up.  I made myself a big lettuce salad out of the spring blend of baby lettuces, sweet pea pods, an assortment of cherry and grape tomatoes, roasted peanuts, cucumber, and sunflower seeds.  It was very tasty.  I had a couple slices of buttered French bread too.  That’s all I ate today other than a small package of Black Forest fruit gummies.

The trees were frosty and lovely—like that scene from Dr. Zhivago where he and his family escape to that palace where they hid out for a few months.

In the evening, I cleared off the table by my recliner, found some bills and wrote them out—including my car insurance bill for the next 6  months.  It’s over $500 for six months, so that is a painful check to write out, but at least once it is paid, there is no more written out to them till July.  My mother told me that my sister Joni and her husband have already received their giant $600 stimulus money *insert eye roll.*  At her insistence, I checked my credit union, and no big bucks have been dropped into my account.  Most of mine is going to be donated anyhow—my nephew Erik is in dire straits as he cannot find a job—and he is a hard worker looking for a real, full time job, not like the lazy ass spawn.  He is really depressed and feels like a failure because he has never had trouble finding a job.  So, Erik may be getting the lion’s share of my pathetic stimulus package.

 

That’s the most interesting (not very) of my days in the new year so far.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

That sounds like a bit too much adventure! May your kidneys have cleared!

[chochiyo_sama]

I sure hope so. I just did some house work and laundry, and I am feeling a little bit of pain in my left side again--and New Year's Eve day I had done a LOT of cleaning, so maybe working riles it up. I'm gonna have a chair and do nothing for a little while to see if it calms down now.

[the_godiva]

It's good the nurse called Jack rather than you did. I expect his reaction was better with the news coming from a nurse in the ER rather than you. And it came as a surprise that you were even in the ER as none of your family really knew you were there. Caleb is old enough to have a driver's license. Doesn't he have one? Why couldn't he have come to get you by himself?

You had an urgent need to pee because of those duct dialators.

With the blood and the pain gone, I wouldn't have been surprised if you did pass both of those stones, in which case YAY. No surgery.

Are you going to need that $600 to pay for the ambulance ride?

[chochiyo_sama]

I couldn't rouse anyone earlier--no one responded to my texts except my sisters who live quite a bit further away.

I probably will need the $600 to pay for the ambulance. This may put the monkey wrench into my plan to install a tub or build a covered deck this summer. All my savings will be spent on medical bills again.

Sucks.