Simon's Latest Medical Stuff

Some of you may have noticed that the blog has been irregular of late. There's a reason for that.

About 10 days ago I had trouble ( I'm going to use official medical Franglais here) making pipi and I was in considerable pain from sort of the stomach region. Things weren't shifting as they should, as well. Everyone assumed it was a stone, possibly caused by the massive amounts of calcium I am taking to counteract a side effect from my cancer treatment.

A visit to the Doctor resulted in a recommendation to get a CT scan, and Susan rang every imaging place in the book, only to be told it would be 3 weeks at least before anything could be done. A second visit to the Dr, and we received some inside information about an "échographiste" (ultrasound clinic) that operates every hour under the sun. Ringing him produced an almost immediate appointment and off we went.

The ultrasound was on Friday evening. Hé could see a problem with the left kidney, but he couldn't actually see a stone, just the damage in my urinary tract that is typically caused by one. Then I had a really bad evening on Friday - was in agony from about 8:30 to 4am and just sat up waiting for it to ease. 

Sunday was an excellent day, until the evening when it all kicked off again.

I didn't get any sleep at all on Sunday night it was so painful. I sat up from 10pm to 8am taking painkillers every 4 hours, then stopped taking painkillers and went to bed in agony at 8am, took a handful of painkillers at Monday morning and the effects were almost immediate so I slept for 4 hours.

I went to the Dr the same Monday (Doctolib is amazing), she wrote a letter for Urgences at the hospital (any hospital) so I could get all the tests done. I kept the painkillers happening all Monday and Tuesday, and Tuesday after lunch we presented at Tours Vinci, mainly because I already have a urologist there: the same man who removed my prostate.

We weren't in the waiting room long before I was called in to see a Doctor. She handed me over to another Doctor, who handed me over to a third. Three hours later I was wheeled in to the CT scanner, where a 4mm stone was discovered hiding in my kidney. At that stage my kidney function was down to 50%.

Another ride through the atomic donut.

The long and the short of it is that on Wednesday afternoon the urologist pushed a 1950s TV camera and a chainsaw up where no-one has the right to push anything, and they extracted a stone the size of a tic-tac. Thankfully it was done under a general anaesthetic, but the lingering pain was not inconsiderable. A stent was fitted that has to be removed in 4 weeks (oh joy) and that should be that.

An A.I. generated image of what I assume went on whilst I was asleep.

On Thursday I was released, and yesterday I celebrated by walking 600 pain free, but very "old man shuffle" metres. If the weather's nice again today I may repeat the effort.