Oh ...

Had my Urology appointment today.

Doctor: "Hello, how are you?"

Lori: "I'm confused"

Doctor: "Excuse me?"

Lori" "I'm probably the most confused 'kidney stone patient' you will ever meet."

Doctor: "Probaby not - what has you so confused?"

I proceed to tell him what has happened in the last 5 days - with me - now - having no pain and me - now - having not 'passed' a stone. I told him I was confused, had I passed the stone or not, I never felt myself peeing out a rock ...

Doctor: "You don't feel yourself 'peeing out a rock' - you probably won't feel anything."

Lori: "What!? I was told in the ER when it is time to pass it ... ie 'pee it out' that it would hurt like the dickens, but to just 'push through the pain and go for it'."

Doctor: "The ER people are idiots. They don't know everything about every little thing ... so they make crap like that up."

Lori: "Wha?"

Doctor: "Seriously, for fun. By definition 'passing a stone' is the stone moving from your kidney to your bladder in a teeny tiny tube - it hurts. Once it is in your bladder you are generally home free - the tube from your bladder ... out - is way bigger and generally you don't feel like you are passing anything. So, I think you 'passed the stone' already. Let me go look at your CT scan and I will be right back."

Lori (alone): "Whoo Hooo!" Fist Punch "IT.IS.OVER!!!"

Doctor: "I have looked at your CT scan and checked your urine. There is no sign of infection anymore, that is good, and based on the size of the stone (2mm - I KNOW! All you hard core 'Kidney Stoners' not very big ... but hurt like hell! I am a baby.) you have probably passed it like I said."

Lori: "GREAT! So I am done! This is great news - thank you - I have just been in a

waiting...
waiting...
waiting...

mode and it is no fun."

Doctor: "Well there IS another stone in the right kidney ..."

Lori: "Excuse me?"

Doctor: "Yeah, another stone ... on the other side. Have you had any pain on your right side?"

Lori: "Shi..., no."

Doctor: "Well, give us a call when it starts to pass."

Lori: "Um, OK? Thanks?"


Lori (in elevator): "Well, ... crap!"


Waiting ....


Waiting ....


Waiting ....

Playing Catch Up

A couple of weeks ago, Gary's sister and brother-in-law (my in-laws) came down to visit.

Yes.


To visit.



Us.



In Houston.



In the summer.



Actually in the 23 years (minus 2 for Norway) and not counting my parents and my siblings, and not counting Rachael's funeral (doesn't count as a 'visit' in my book) this is the FIRST time we have had guests.

And it was in Houston.


In the summer.


And there is a catch!

Steve, my brother-in-law was competing in the National Senior Olympics as a javelin thrower. So we did some stuff that we normally don't do without guests in the house.

The first thing we did, was drive to the George R. Brown Convention Center a few Saturdays ago so that Steve could check in. Did that lovely drive on 59 through downtown with all the confusing interchanges - but got off on the correct exit and didn't die in the process.

While waiting for Steve, I got out and snapped some photos. There was not a whole lot to photo and so the photos are rather boring ... thus I played around with them some. Pretty much there were buildings and flowers ...

The convention center is HUGE:




All I could see of a pretty church was the steeple:



And then I was still bored (still waiting for the blinkin stone to pass...) and created a mask and used it on a photo:



This is what the mask looks like:

It didn't like the looks of the flowers using the mask plain, so I 'cut out' only the pink flowers from the photo, laid a copy of this over top of the masked photo of pink flowers and reduced the opacity to 50% so it was see through.

Yes,

I have too much time on my hands ....



Waiting ....




Waiting ....



Waiting ....

Between a Rock ... And a Very Hard Place

I had such good intentions ...

Copied my photos onto my computer ...

Mentally grouped them into 3 mediocre posts ...

And on Thursday began again ...


And here I am 3 days later - yet again - a slothful blogger ....


BUT! I have an excuse ... a note from my doctor, if you will.

I FINALLY decided to 'listen' to what my body was trying to tell somewheres about 8:00am on Saturday. I wasn't liking what it seemed to be shouting at me. A NEW and completely different pain than I have ever experienced before - and I HAVE EXPERIENCED A LOT OF DIFFERENT PAINS ....

It was in my back, on the left side of my spine where the thoracic region gives way to the lumbar region. I adroitly came up with 'kidney troubles' something that was new for me. Probably an infection, I thought - just lump it in with the other 4 infections I was fighting at the time.

And promptly ignored it ...

...


... until I could ignore it no longer.

It felt like a really bad 'stitch in my side'. I thought that maybe I was straining a muscle sitting at my desk (it was now one in the afternoon) so I went to lay down, get comfortable and read for awhile.

No matter how I placed my body in my bed, that 'stitch' kept hurting. It was a minor buzzing irritation. An hour later it had become a rather LOUD irritation. And an hour after that it was screaming at me "Get me to the hospital, you fool!".


So - both my boys took me to the ER.

Things were looking up - I was actually able to pee in a cup ... given 30 minutes to have a go at it ...

Had a CT scan of my kidneys ...

And a relatively exceptional experience with getting my IV put in. They have a hard time getting IV's in me - and Gary had warned them of this in advance and asked if we could get their best person to to the jabbing, and the in-and-out searching when the vein is not hit, and for the slipping the IV plastic tubie through the needle after finding that very elusive vein. I generally am poked and prodded on average 3 times before a proper IV is 'installed'.

The nurse had identified a perfect vein on my foot to use as her last resort try - she said it was 100% doable, but would go for the top of my hand first.

And whaddaya know? She hits oil on her first attempt! Things are looking up!

They give me some pain medication and leave - for parts unknown.


We were waiting around for the doctor to come and give us the results, if any, of the CT scan.

We waited ...

and waited ...

and waited some more ...

And then something happened. I thought that stitch in my side hurt? A little voice in my head whispered "Oh, honey, you ain't seen nothin' yet".

And then some nasty, mysterious little hospital bed bug started stabbing me in the side with a very large butcher knife. Over and over and over.

I tried to ignore this and took photos with my phone for my infamous 'toe shot' but was in so much pain - my toes were not cooperating. They would splay out in pain, curl in pain, pretty much whatever toes can do, they were doing it as each slice of the knife hit:




I had taken my 6:00pm morphine, which you would think would help with this uncomfortable situation, but it was doing nothing.

And then things got worse ...

Way worse ...

I believe I was at an '11' on the pain scale of 0 - 10 having only being to a '9' at any given point in my lifetime before this. My theory of the '9'? My thinking was if I ever said I was a '10', some vengeful god would look down upon me and say: "You think you are a '10'? I'LL SHOW YOU A '10'" and then do exactly that. So I was never a '10' ...

... oh, until about 7:30 and, man - I was a mess! Couldn't control my breathing, writhing in pain, half delirious with pain. Gary, THREE times went out and spoke with someone about maybe giving me more pain medication. They were waiting on the doctor, but a nurse (that lovely lady that hit my vein on the first try) came in and watched the show of me writhing in agony saying she was sorry but there was nothing she could do. "I think the stone is moving" she said while watching me like I was some sort of lab experiment.

It is a bitty 2mm piece of sand for heavens sake! How could this be causing me such trouble?

Eventually the doctor came in, I got more pain meds and they hooked me up to saline for fluids and an IV antibiotic since I also had an infection and said after they were done, I was free to go home to pass the stone in the comfort of my own abode.

Things went smoothly from there - and I was under the sneaking suspicion that the stone had stopped moving since I was not on any amount of pain medication to make me either incredibly happy or incredibly high - so I would have still felt the knife stabbing ... it would just be less intense.

An hour later they unhooked me, gave us a stack of instructions including my favorite: drink till you want to puke - CONTINUOUSLY therefore peeing a lot, added 7 prescriptions to the paper pile, and sent us on our merry way.

I drank fluids continuously during the night, making me have to pee every half an hour, thus getting no sleep. And kept up the forcing fluids regimen all day today. Other than peeing like clockwork every half an hour and having a pretty severe stitch in my side, nada.


Nothing.

No writhing in pain.

No moaning in pain.

No clenching every muscle in my body in response to the pain.

Therefore no passing of the 2mm bugger.

And ... I AM TERRIFIED.

They sent me home with wimpy drugs, and I have experienced how fun it is when the little sucker is moving and I am really not looking forward to passing this thing ....

... but


.... THE WAITING IS KILLING ME!

Maybe tonight will be the night ... one can always hope because you want to get it over with, but at the very same time dreading that pain again ... an odd mixture of feelings.

So I wait ...


and I wait ...


and I wait ....

Yeah ... Well ... It's Me

Hi!

My name is Lori Hurst and I used to be a blogger ...

Then things got really strange, then a twee bit stressful then I got sick ...

.... and then I got sicker. And, well - now I seem to be a different person. I have lost the ability to blog. I just don't know what to blog about. This might be due to the fact that my life is incredibly boring right now - but as I recall - that never stopped me in the past?

I have decided to work on this.

I don't really think there is anyone out there just waiting for me to type some prose ... no one cares, I get that ... except my parents and since they have been sorely in the dark for a bit now - I thought that I would keep blogging for them. Y'all are welcome to visit - but I am no longer assuming that anyone is ...

It has been a while and things have happened - so I will take a few days to catch up.

One thing is my photo taking. Since life is not just one never ending trip to and from Australia, I don't have all that much to take pictures of. Lets compare last year and this years stats of number of photos taken for the last few months, shall we?


Yeah ....


.... pretty much that sums it up! But also - I am just not into photo taking like I was. I don't know why - and I am assuming this is a temporary setback, but - well - it is what it is right now, so very few visual aids.

I found some photos that I took on April 23rd of this year THAT WERE STILL ON MY CAMERA. That says a lot right there. I RELIGIOUSLY take all photos that I have taken for the day off my camera sometime in the evening and review them. Since it is now June ... well - I will work on this.

I was SO WORRIED about Jessie moving, then I got really, really, REALLY weird about it ... and all for nothing. Her new home is wonderful. Her new staff is exceptional, and she is having a blast.

Here are some photos I took of her new home:







The last two are of Jessie's room. She has her own - I am not sure if she would like that or not - being the social butterfly that she is, but I like that it is a little more 'homey'.

She was being horrible right before she went to the house - screaming when it was time to go home that she didn't want to go back. As a mother, I can think of nothing worse than listen to your daughter beg to stay home with you as you drag her back to the place she now resides .... unless she is doing it just to be a butt. But I really couldn't tell, and thought it would end when she moved.

It did not, which led me to believe that, indeed, she was just yanking my chain - making my Sunday evenings horrible - feelings of guilt, being a horrible mother and just plain being sad and worried about my daughter took up hours of my time, followed by horrible nightmares. And all because she just felt like being a bum.

And these new folks?

ANGELS!

Since we were having such a hard time getting her back to the house, they DRIVE OUT AND PICK HER UP AND TAKE HER BACK. And she is all cool about that - in fact she is very excited to see them - thus the reason I know she is being a butt and not really freaked out about leaving our home and going to hers. I believe that is going the extra mile - and I now have stress free Sunday evenings after Jessie leaves since there is no tears, begging or sobbing (on both of our parts).

It is also easy for others to come and get Jessie - a HUGE improvement from RSS. So that makes anyone wanting to go get her and take her out for a few hours pain free. These people are WONDERFUL!

A photo of my 'little pill' taken the same day I photographed her home:



Well, I will try to move on to May tomorrow, or whenever ...

I thought I would mention since my last blog mentions me being sick and all the tests ... everything has come back normal except my
T Cells which are, again, precariously low - thus I am getting sick all the time. I am just a titch above my very first blood test with this doctor and at that time she said I was just a titch above 'death' in terms of how low my T Cells were, so things are not looking great, but I am hoping to see if we can improve those stats. We have tried most everything - injections, vitamins, herbs, but haven't found that magical thing that will produce more T Cells and get my immune system to something that will keep me out of bed - but we will keep on .... keepin' on ....




Later ....