And when shock wave lithotripsy fails (mine did...twice...7 years ago) they usually do what is called in the medical community a "wait and see". Which means "let's not fuck with it until we have to". Now 7 years later my stone decided to move around again and had to go. Since it was to big to go up through my urereter there were two ways to get it. PCNL where they do a keyhole surgery to remove the stone, which will sideline me now for a few weeks, or open surgery with about a six inch gash that would have hospitalized me for 3-6 weeks and sidelined me for 3-4 months. I had the keyhole surgery.
The pain generally isn't to bad, however my drain tube became dislodged Sunday evening and before my procedure to have it removed on Monday it wrecked havoc inside my kidney. They had to give me dilaudid 3 times in the space of about an hour. Now about every 8 hours my now injured kidney starts having spasms and for about two solid hours afterwards it feels like a very large man is trying to crush my right ball with the heel of a massive work boot. It's fucked up. I'm eating percosets every 4 hours. 2 when it ramps to about a 9 on the pain scale.
But at least I dodged the dreaded urereter stint. Had one 7 years ago and thought I'd rather die. And my stone is gone so I can focus on recovery.
I'm not allowed to lift more than five pounds for 6 weeks, and no long distance travel for 3 months either. My urologist brought me back to reality that despite being a simple operation, it was a major one due to the fact that they actually operated on a major organ.
I gather the stint you guys are referring to is the Foley cat. It's pretty awful. To me the most annoying part was trying to sleep with an inflated balloon in your bladder. We're conditioned to wake up when it's time to wiz, and that thing made you always think it was time. In my case, once they took it out they told me if I couldn't wiz in the next hour they were putting it back in. That motivated me enough to take all the fear out of what that first leak was going to feel like.
As for pain in the actual kidney, mine was tolerable for a while. The biopsy involves shooting a spring-loaded tube into your kidney and pulling out small core samples. About ten of them. While you can numb the surrounding area pretty well, you can't really numb a kidney, so it felt like getting punched each time. The next few days were tolerable, like I said. Then it turned into something truly miserable. For the first time in my life I had pain so severe I was decided to drive myself to the hospital about 11 at night. Ready to walk out the door I went to use the head one last time and passed one of the core samples that didn't make it out in the tube. Instantly felt better physically, and the emotional payoff of knowing that it was all over was wonderful. Slept beautifully the rest of the night.
And the recovery time sounds about like mine after the transplant. While I was opened up about six inches, I've no doubt that the trauma is about the same internally for your tiny hole. I recall that kidney girl was equally laid up and hers was a laparoscopic procedure with only a couple of small holes. I was up and going to the store for groceries 6 days after the procedure, but I couldn't lift anything and I fatigued very easily. I believe the lifting part was only applicable until the staples came out.
On a side note, I was excited when they bumped me up from morphine to dilaudid, but found it pretty unremarkable. I have a very high tolerance for pain, and opioids have little effect on me anyway, but I'm always keen to try new stuff. At least the morphine gives you a great rush for a minute or so when they push it. I didn't even get that from the dilaudid. One thing I did learn is that it takes no time at all to get pretty strung out on hydrocodone type products. Like only a day or two. They didn't warn Kidney Girl of this and she was in sorry shape for about two weeks once the lortabs were no longer necessary a couple of days after the surgery. I've generally decided to avoid that shit altogether.
Topic: Kidney Stone Surgery (Read 1568 times)
