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Surgery #1 is Done!

Goodbye and good riddance to the kidney stones in the right kidney. The urolgoist was able to start during surgery again this week after having had a broken arm, and I’m not sure who was happier . . me to get rid of these stones or him to be back to doing surgery.

I’m not going to say it scares me but one of the things that makes me apprehensive about moving to small towns is the medical care but I do believe, even though you have more options in cities, we get really good care in small towns. The nurses and staff are always so nice. Every time I leave the hospital, and this was my second minor surgery since living here and Vince has been to the ER once and I’ve been twice (black widow bite and kidney stones), and when we leave, I always think “That was not a good experience!’

Vince kept wanting me to go to Abilene for a urologist and I said . . no . . when you feel bad, you don’t want to have a 2 hour drive unless you just can’t help it and I had heard good things about the urologist here. Yes, there’s just one but where we lived in MO, there wasn’t one!  After having the surgery today, Vince and I both really like him and I’m glad I stayed here.

The surgery I had is the ureteroscopy and you can read about it here . . if you are interested but I surely don’t expect that anyone will be interested except that I find it so amazing that they can go through those tiny tubes with a basket! It hurts like heck when I go to the bathroom for about 24 hours. Otherwise, recovery will be a piece of cake  . . so long as Vince does all the cleaning and cooking and weeding and canning for . . what?   Six months?  No . . if I can get dinner out of him tonight, I’ll be doing great.

There’s a stent that I have to keep for about a week. I forgot when my appointment is to get it removed but I made the mistake of telling the doctor that the last time I had this surgery, I removed the stent myself. This time, there’s no string . . I guess that’s one way to be sure I don’t remove the stent myself.

By 11:00 a.m., I was out of recover and back in my little room with Vince. They fed us lunch and sent us on our way. Got home and slept for about three hours  . . now I’m going to try to knit.

The surgery wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being when we lived in KY so I’m not dreading having the left kidney done. 

Thank you all for the nice emails, the prayers, the offers to come and help me .  . I love my blog readers!!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Wow, that was quick! Glad things went well and those stones won’t be bothering you anymore! Take care.

  3. Gotta love these types of surgery. In and out!! So glad you’re doing well. Behave and get some more knitting done. Love the sweater by the way.

  4. Glad it is over and everything went good. Now relax and knit if you can!

  8. Yes- 6 months for the right side and another 6 months for the left side- that’s what I would tell my patients!

  9. I’m so glad the surgery went well and you have Vince to help you do things for the next couple of days. Take care of yourself and don’t over do (I know easier said than done)!

  10. Glad your surgery went well and you are feeling good. Hope you heal quickly.

  11. I’ve been out of commission for the last couple of weeks, and am just getting caught up on blog posts today. My goodness, Judy, you’ve been through a lot lately with the eye problems and kidney stones! Its good to hear that you are finally getting some relief! I’ll keep you in my prayers.

  13. Yea! one down and since it wasn’t so bad you won’t be dreading the next one as much. Play it for all it’s worth for at least a couple of days!

  16. Good to see your post. Thank you Judy, for taking the time to let us know. I don’t know about kidney stones but we had a dog that got bladder stones. They got rid of the stones and then he took medication to prevent new ones from forming. Do they have something like that for kidney stones? I’m glad you’re not feeling too bad and one surgery is over.

    • There are several different kinds of kidney stones, as I understand it and I probably don’t understand it all very well. Some are caused by diet and can be controlled with diet modification. Some can be controlled with medication and some are just there . . diet modification doesn’t help and medication doesn’t help. Want to guess which ones I have? Yep . . nothing helps but it has been 10 years since mine were tested and I know things have improved during that time so the doctor is hopeful that testing will reveal something we can do to avoid the stones in the future.

      Also, at least the last three times I’ve had them were during the summer and dehydration makes them worse. From the size of mine, they didn’t start forming this summer but I doubt I drink enough water for the amount of sweating and outside work I do so I’m going to try to do better with that.

      It will take a while before my stones are tested. In fact, I’m thinking the doctor pulverized this one today so much that I’m not capturing any of it so we may have to wait for the next surgery to even be able to have enough to send off for testing.

  17. Glad to read such good news, Judy! I hope that you don’t feel so good now that you over do ~ take it easy! Hugs from CA ~ Penny

  20. Judy, thanks so much for letting us know you’re doing well. Hope you feel up to knitting but if you feel like sleeping – sleep. I’m a firm believer in listening to our bodies! Take care.

  21. What a good thing to have over with….well, half over, I guess. Maybe you can get Vince to pamper you for at least 2 or 3 days.

  24. So glad it was relatively easy for you! It’s nice that you were able to stay local and receive excellent care.

  25. Wishing you a very speedy recovery ! And go in to get the left side done now !LOL

  26. I’m so glad it went well, Judy. I hope the other one is just as quick, and you get another dinner out of Vince. =)

  27. I’m so glad that all went well and it didn’t turn out as bad as you remembered. Praying for a quick recovery and all goes smoothly for you during your recuperation.

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