Long Time, no speak

Wow have I been through a whirlwind since I last wrote 2 weeks ago. I ended up in the hospital getting surgery to remove one of my kidney stones. It turned into a huge disaster similar to what happened when I had a stone removed 2 years ago. My body couldn't tolerate the stent that was placed in the ureter (between the kidney and the bladder) to make sure that there was no swelling after surgery, and I woke up in the most EXTREME pain I have ever been in. Long story short, my urologist ended up pulling out the stent and the catheter while I was wide awake, and I was screaming and crying for over 4 hours without any relief as they maxed out all different kinds of IV meds and made sure I didn't stop breathing.  I spent the night in the ICU that night because of how much they had to give me. I also wasn't able to see my husband for 5 days- almost no communication at all- because he ended up getting the worst stomach flu he's ever had in his life, probably from taking me to the ER that first night (a nurse told me it had been going around). It was horrible not having my best friend, my partner in life, there with me like he had been the last time I was in the hospital. But I know it wasn't his fault. Luckily my parents were there by my side most of the time and a HUGE support, and I had many family members, friends, and church members praying for me & visiting.

I still have two stones (one in each kidney) that haven't started coming down yet, so if they'll stay up there, I can get them "shockwaved" (broken into little pieces by basically beating my body to bruises) in an outpatient procedure. Unfortunately, I think one of them might be moving because I'm having more pain & irritation on the left side of me and in my bladder now. But I just have to take this hour by hour, day by day.

In this post, I'm not going to go into the details of my hospital stay, or the issue of my urologist leaving for vacation that weekend and therefore leaving me with an incompetent, horrible hospitalist dr. (because there were NO OTHER urologists who work at this hospital!) who decided to tell other dr.'s and nurses that I was a "drug seeker" just because I have tons of health issues and have a higher tolerance for pain meds because of my back problems. Huuuuuuge story about her sometime in the future.... here's one little preview: She decided to discontinue ALL of my medications (for crohn's disease, pain, EVERYTHING I was taking at home); she apparently likes to take patients off of all of their meds and "start over" because SHE knows what's REALLY wrong with the patient... and it took my nurse over 3 hours that night to go through my chart history, find all of the meds that I was on, and get them all approved again by the new hospitalist on call that night. Do you know what happens if you stop your crohn's meds like Prednisone? You can die.

Anyway, back to the pain after surgery and the day after surgery...What happened was I had inflammation and fluid build-up in the kidney from after surgery that was causing more pain and bleeding. There are so many details and there's just not enough time to write it all here. But I needed pain meds to manage this pain and observation to make sure the other stones weren't coming down and that the inflammation wasn't causing any blockage.

 I will say that God did some amazing things, and breakthrough came. Many advocates (nurses and advisors who happened to know my dad- he is a teacher at the adventist school and the hospital is adventist, so he knows tons of people and has taught their kids- and the truth about who I really am) came to my side and defended me, and I ended up getting rid of the crazy dr. (after hearing many stories of the crazy things she's done, I hope she gets fired... we are writing a letter and one of the heads of the hospital who we know has already written her up). She was replaced by great doctor who listened, understood, and gave me what I needed to recover at the hospital. My urologist came back from vacation on Monday, and that's another story in itself also.... because I had told him about my body having horrible pain from the stent last time I had a stone removed, but things were not ready for me post-operatively like they should've been.\\

I will end with this quote:

"I find beauty in not only the beautiful things in life, but the bittersweet and sad as well. To me, there is something poignantly lovely about the human experience from its splendor to its grief. God created all our emotions, not just the happy ones, and for His good purposes. That's why a good cry can feel so good. And hitting our limits forces us to look outside ourselves for a Savior. It is in the plea, when we're at our end, that we can find that which is truly life-giving. Personally, my moments of deepest grief, deepest pain, have resulted in the most beautiful seasons in my heart. I've met God more intimately in those moments than in all the other pleasant ones combined. What isn't completely lovely about that?"

~ Leslie, http://topofthepagewithleslie.blogspot.com/