Rolling Stones

Yesterday morning I woke up with a sharp pain in my lower left side of my back. I've been through this sort of thing a time or two before in my almost 9 years of paralysis, so I was pretty sure that it had something to do with my kidneys (most likely a kidney stone). I groaned because I definitely don't look forward to the prospect of being hospitalized, and I didn't want to ruin my 2½ year streak being hospital free), however I know it's important to get things like this checked out since kidney stones left unchecked usually result in me becoming septic; something that can be life-threatening. 

My mom called my urologist's office and after they consulted my doctor they said that I needed to come to the hospital to get a CT scan. This definitely wasn't how I was looking forward to spending my day, but you've gotta do what you've gotta do, especially in my case since my health is rather tenuous. My mom and I headed to the hospital around 10:30 this morning. Once we got to the hospital we started making the rounds (we had to make several stops in different places, and we seemed to have to wait an awfully long time at each stop. Fortunately my mom and I brought a book, so we weren't as bored as we could've been. After I got my CT scan my doctor said he wanted to see me, so I was fairly certain that that wasn't a good sign.

So we headed up to the floor where my urologist's office is. He told me that I have a 3mm kidney stone in my left ureter. (No surprise considering the way I was feeling and my past experiences with kidney stones.) Fortunately the kidney stone is in my ureter and not blocking and my kidney preventing it from empting. That's happened to me before and results in making me septic (that's when you get extremely sick).

My doctor said that there's a 70% chance that I'll be able to pass this stone within two weeks without medical intervention. I sincerely hope it doesn't take near that long because I'm in pain! They always ask what your pain level is on a scale from 1 to 10, and my pain was a solid 5. I'm a tough cookie, and although the pain wasn't excruciating and could've been much worse, it still was constant and uncomfortable.

I also have a few other stones in my left kidney. They've been there for a while and haven't caused any problems, but the doctor could tell from the CT scan that they'd gotten a little bigger in the past few months, so he said it would be best to have surgery to remove them. I definitely don't look forward to this, but it doesn't sound like it should be anything major, so I'm crossing my fingers that the surgery will go well.