Rolling Stones

Several weeks ago I found blood in my urine.

Yes, I know, it sounds disgusting, and I have no idea why I’m sharing this with you all, other then the fact that for some reason I feel the need to write all of the time. I write about other peoples personal lives, so why not share a little of mine?

Now I’m not a big fan of getting older. It seems that as time passes my body is falling apart regularly. For example, two years ago I had an operation for an umbilical hernia. One year ago I had the operation again because apparently the first one did not take. This time they placed a mesh of Gortex in me and I was assured that this would do the trick once and for all.

Well, once I return from my business trip I am scheduled to once again go under the knife to have the same area repaired one more time. This time they’re talking about a larger incision, and a larger piece of mesh to create a wider coverage area. Of course, I am once again being told that this would really fix the problem.

Always thinking, I asked the Doc if instead of a Gortex mesh, I could instead have Kevlar. After all, if a large portion of my stomach was going to be covered in material, why not make it a bullet-proof type?

What does this have to do with my urine? It seems when I went in to get my urine checked out they found my new ruptured hernia in the CT scan. On top of all of this they found something called prostatitis, which I guess is an infection of some sort in my prostate.

Have you ever begun working on your car, or sent it in for maintenance, and found a bunch of things wrong that you were not aware of? Many people think it’s just the mechanic trying to make money, but this is truly how these things are discovered. If your piece of equipment has not been checked out in a while, chances are, when you begin to notice problems, several others show up in the investigation.

This was the case with me. Apparently I had a variety of things going bad at the same time, and the prostatitis was just one more of those things.

The Doc I went to suspected a kidney stone was causing the blood in my urine, or possibly a bladder infection (which I believed turned out to be the prostatitis) because my urine sample showed the signs of the infection. Unfortunately, the review of the CT Scan showed no kidney stone evident.

I was treated for the bladder infection and sent on my way. I took antibiotics for 14 days hoping this would be the end of things.

One weekend I began having pain, which was due to my hernia, so I went to the Emergency Room where they ran some more tests, and the Doc there looked at my CT scan and didn’t see much other then the hernia. He said I still had some sort of infection that was showing up in my urine, and I mentioned that my normal Doc said if what he gave me didn’t work he was going to give me a stronger antibiotic.

The ER Doc agreed and sent me home with a stronger antibiotic.

The following weekend, after taking my antibiotics for five days, I began having pain when I urinated (aren’t you glad you’re reading this?). Since I was going on this business trip to San Diego, I could not wait to see my regular doctor, and I did not want to leave town if I was getting worse or had other complications. So it was back to the ER I went.

This time I saw another Doc and he was puzzled. My symptoms on where I was feeling the pain, and the blood in my urine, all seemed to point to a kidney stone, but the last CT scan I had showed negative.

He said the previous infection in my urine seemed to have cleared up from the prior week, which was at least some good news. This still didn’t explain my pain or the blood.

Off I went to get another CT scan so the Doc could compare the two. When the results came back he found what all the Docs suspected before. It was a 4mm kidney stone, and in the few weeks between the two scans it had moved from my kidneys to the top of my bladder.

This confused the ER Doc a little because he said I should be having a lot more pain then I was. He told me that many men would be in agonizing pain and feeling nauseous with only a 2mm stone and mine was twice that size!

He surmised I must have a higher then normal tolerance for pain, because he declared that this was a pain that was close to a woman giving birth. When I mentioned this to my wife she laughed and asked if a man told me that.

The funny thing is, the local pharmacist gave me the same line. Apparently the local medical community frequents the same message forums where this was discussed. It was kind of amusing that this was the canned answer for kidney stone pain.

I told the pharmacist what my wife had said and we both laughed because she was right. Nothing could be as painful as passing what is equivalent to a football through a small opening. The closest a guy will come to passing a football is downfield to one of his buddies on the weekend.

The ER Doc sent me on my way with a strong painkiller prescription in case I had trouble on my trip, and the advice to drink more water.

I’m happy to report that the pain has gone away, and I am on the road for the week in beautiful San Diego. I’m not sure if the stone has passed, or will during this trip, but I’m confident that all will be fine.

The only thing remaining is to schedule my surgical appointment for the hernia operation. Getting old is starting to cramp my lifestyle, which wasn’t that exciting in the first place!