Stents and Stones

Stents and stones may crush my soul

But will they actually kill me

It damn sure felt like it at 3:00 in the morning as I sat on the floor beside my bed debating on whether or not I should call an ambulance. I had been experiencing intractable vomiting for the past two hours with no relief in sight. It has been a couple years since one of these episodes landed me in the Emergency Room, but I knew that is where I needed to be.

Somehow I summoned the strength to make a phone call to my GI so that they could call the hospital and give them a heads up. That was probably the best thing that I could have done for myself. I then called my mom and 911 somewhere in the 5:00 hour. By that time I had been throwing up for about 4 hours straight and dehydration was settling in. I had been there before.

The lone paramedic showed up and began asking me all the same questions they always do that I barely have the strength to answer. Still vomiting and retching uncontrollably, the EMT tried to start an IV in my left arm and blew the vein. Blood began to pour from the crook of my arm and my legs and hands started to tingle. He managed to get me cleaned up and was successful putting the IV in my right arm. By now the transport ambulance had arrived and I was making my way out to their vehicle.

As I am being loaded into the ambulance, I see my two youngest children who are up and getting ready to go to school watching me. I could not speak or comfort them. It is such a helpless place to be. What made it worse is that the EMT told me that it would be a 15 hour wait at the ER at either of the nearby hospitals because of all the Covid crap. The thought of being stuck in the waiting room for that long without help was excruciatingly terrifying. My body would not have lasted through that.

And I guess they realized that, because when I got there, they put me straight into a room and gave me what I needed to stop the cycle of vomiting. After recovering for a bit, I was taken for  CT scan of my abdomen. The cause of all my troubles was a centimeter sized kidney stone that was blocking the ureter and causing swelling in my right kidney. 

A couple hours later and I was in surgery to have a stent placed to keep the flow of urine possible. It is a thin tube that goes through my ureter and bladder and into my kidney. It is not the most comfortable I have ever been, let's just say that. Now that the thing is in there, I know that it will have to come out and they tell me this is done with an office procedure. That traumatizes me just thinking about it. They are going to pull a tube out through my organs while I am awake to feel it?!?! Fuck.

I still haven't gotten rid of the problem yet either. That requires another surgery next week to break up the stone. I have pretty much been in bed all week. Crohn's Disease has shown her rotten face again. My invisible disease has knocked me on my ass again. This time with her stents and her stones. I never know which direction the punches are coming from, but they just keep getting worse. I am so tired of being sick all the time. I bet you're tired of hearing about it. If I didn't write, I would go insane with pain. If you took the time to read this far, thank you. My invisible disease has shown her ugly face again.