(no subject)

Sorry I've been absent. I was in the hospital for a few days learning about kidney stones. Here's what I learned: they hurt a lot, make you sick to your stomach, and there is no way to find a comfortable position because the pain will find a way.

I went through lithotripsy (sp?) yesterday and that is supposed to have broken up the monster that was causing my problems. My stone was 4.5 mm. Anything over 5 is automatic surgery from what they told me.

Lithotripsy is when they shoot your stone with ultrasound and shatter it. You have to be completely sedated (though it's not the same as most surgical anesthesia). So now I have been hospitalized for the first time and I've had a kind of surgery. Rock on.

Now I'm living painfully at home, straining my urine for pieces of the stone so they can analyze it, and still feeling queasy (though whether that's from the stone's aftermath or the urine straining I cannot tell).

I will try to catch up, but I don't have the energy to read back through everything right now. If something huge happened, please let me know.