My Wife's Kidney Stone Adventure

[Aragorn243]

Update on the Mrs. I'm taking her to the hospital again today for what we count as her 5th surgery to remove a large kidney stone.

We are in an argument with the surgeon who is insisting that she has not had 4 surgeries and this one isn't a surgery either.

Now, he claims that doctors count surgeries in a different way and he can see how a layman might count them differently.

My way of counting. You take a scapple and cut into someone's side and then kidney. That's a surgery. His way of counting, that is not a surgery. Go figure. He's only counting the attempts to actually remove the stone, so that's one at this point.

Surgery 1 - insert tube into kidney
Surgery 2 - attempt to break up and remove stone, discover tube is in wrong place, attempt to move tube, abort all attempts
Surgery 3 - insert tube into kidney
Surgery 4 - replace small tube with larger tube and break up and remove portion of stone
Surgery 5 (today) remove tube, insert stent.

How do YOU count.

She's had this second, large tube in for a week when the could have removed it at the end of surgery 4. They claim they didn't know if they would need to use it again or not which could be true but they did take a CT scan and kept her in the hospital for an extra day to review everything just in case and we were told it would be used again this Friday, tomorrow.

Now it is a stent and laser through the urethra. Less invasive so better they say and I tend to agree but why leave the damn tube in for an extra week.

Many friends are advising us to lawyer up, my wife's fully on board, I'm starting to move in that direction, at least with the guy that put the tube in wrong the first time. No one can figure out how that happened, he did it in a radiology lab with all the necessary scans while inserting it.

She's missed two weeks of work for a two-day procedure that was to have an additional 2-3 days rest, I've missed 5 days for the surgeries and taking care of her when she's obviously not able to take care of herself.

Getting tired of this.

[browningautorifle]

How do YOU count.

Almost incompetent would be my estimate...next you'll find out it isn't actually a stone at all. My wife went through some of this a couple years back.

[42rocker]

Prayers for both of your Wifes and their getting back to normal.

Later 42rocker

[Low & Slow]

I sure hope all ends well, and soon at that.

[Aragorn243]

It is a stone. That’s for sure. But here’s the thing. We get here this morning and now the surgeon says he’s going to try to take the stone out today and leave the tube in for two weeks. Complete opposite of what he told us yesterday. I think he’s getting concerned we will file a complaint. Before he left, he changed his mind again and said he’d try to have the tube out. Because we are complaining I suspect. He wasn’t going to do anything until we pressed. So I have no idea how today is going to turn out. She’s been in for an hour and a half to two hours which I’m hoping means he’s getting the stone.

[Aragorn243]

Surgeon just came out. He believes they got it all this time. Will do a CT scan to make sure. He kept the tube in until they get the CT scan tomorrow and is hoping he can take it out then.

He thinks this will be the last for this side. I hope so.

[browningautorifle]

hope so.

Hope so... I had the opportunity to watch my wife's pain and hated not be able to do anything. I can only imagine worse...

[Bob Womack]

Yeah, I had complications from prostate surgery that ended up with a blocked catheter and a backup into my kidneys. Some of the most exquisite pain I've ever encountered. Praying for Mrs. A.

Bob

[Sapper740]

As someone who has experienced a few kidney stone attacks over the years I completely commiserate with Mrs. Aragorn. I never knew pain could induce vomiting until I had a kidney stone attack, the pain is that great.

[Aragorn243]

The weird thing is, she never had any pain in her kidney's until they started cutting into them. Even with a stone that large and she has some big ones on the right side also, she has no pain. The surgeries have been bad for her, but that's all.