Day 2 Of Minor Medical Drama

Day two in Cedar Park Regional Hospital. Because I am absolutely fanatical on doing things linearly, I am going to post yesterday's notes about the surgery and the rest of the day now before moving onto today's notes in another post! I'm still a bit woozy from all the meds they have me on, but I think I can make it through.

So I understood from last night in the ER that I was supposed to see the surgeon first thing in the morning and have surgery shortly thereafter. 8 o'clock came, 9 o'clock came, and when I hadn't seen my surgeon by 9:15 I finally asked to see the floor doctor. She came in and said, "I don't know when you're having surgery, I didn't see it on the schedule." So then there was a flurry of phone calls and Dr. Maloney, the urologist and my surgeon, informed the floor doctor that he would be by to see me at four and that he was planning the surgery for around six. By this time I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since noon the previous day besides ice chips. I wasn't really hungry, but I was so dehydrated.

I spent the morning dozing, and then the tempo really picked up.  Doc M rearranged some things and they came in to whisk me off to surgery at 12:10. It all went very fast and was very exciting after that. I met Dr. Maloney and the anesthesiologist, and Dr. Maloney explained that what he planned to do was put a stent in my kidney and try to remove the stone. If he couldn't remove the stone then they were going to have to go in later and blast it. Then they hooked me up to a mask--they also indicated that they were probably going to have to intubate me, joy--and then I was out!

When I came back to myself I was surprised to find myself NOT crying hysterically. I just lay there with kind of a drowsy smile on my face feeling great. What a change! Then Dr. Maloney came in and had a post-op talk with me (why do they all do this right after you've had surgery and you're still all doped up? There's no way in hell you're going to remember anything they say!). Surprisingly I hung onto two things from my conversation from our conversation: 1) he did not find the stone. He founds tons of blood clots from kidney, but no stone--I apparently passed it in the ER. Wow, no wonder I was practically hysterical and foaming at the mouth in the ER if I passed a 7 mm stone. And 2) rural western women are supposed to be tough. He put the stent through the ureter into the kidney and he said it had to stay there a week. However he didn't think I'd find a urologist in Polson so he attached a fine filament to the end of the stent, ran it through the bladder and out the urethra. The he taped the end to my belly so I could remove the stent myself in a week. Pioneer women.

Then they whisked me back to my room for dinner--mistake: too soon after anesthesia. Otherwise, the evening passed well and I gradually gave up the fantasy that I was going to be able to fly home the next day. There are much worse things than staying at Stone's Throw.