Not Really for the Faint of Heart

Frankly, ever since that kidney stone surgery a week ago Tuesday, 12.9, I've not felt at all good. The main issue has been the excruciating pain when urinating, but other than that, I've experienced just a feeling of ....something being not quite right. Exhaustion with a restlessness. Stomach cramps. Difficulty sleeping. After surgery, the doctor had put a stent in my ureter, and I envisioned it being about, oh, 2-3 inches long, maybe. For one thing, I'd never measured my ureter . In fact, I've not given it much thought at all before this stone and, peripherally, when the occasional UTI hit in the past.

So I went in today for stent removal. First, an x-ray. When the technician posted the x-ray up on the lightboard, I leaned forward from where I was lying on the table for a view of it....and was able to see.....[gulp] ......this long pipe with a curl at either end that went up past my pelvic bone to my left kidney, then all the way down to the you-know-whatsy.

I was stunned to see such a thing inside me. And worse, it had to come out.

But they had an equipment malfunction, so I went to eat lunch with Mr. Button, who originally had accompanied me to the office to wait the storm out with me but ended up bailing on me after lunch (at my insistence, actually: I wasn't to be under anesthesia).


When I go back, they're all set for me! a perky nurse tells me. I'm told the removal itself takes all of 30 seconds. On the steel tray next to the bed with the dreaded strirrups lay what looked like several extra long meat thermometers. Can't they cover those up with, say, a towel? Isn't that in poor taste? Can't they offer more of an ambience of.....denial???
First I have to have lidocaine injected into the ureter to numb it, and then the camera goes up, showing the stent on the computer screen. The nurse had said she'd turn the monitor around for me to watch, and that's when I grabbed my camera. After the urether was numbed (though not entirely), the doctor had to fill my bladder with water (bag, hanging) from the ureter, which feels VERY VERY strange, for the bladder to be filled from that direction...and with cold water! I was able to see the stent on the screen, and then we had a look all around the inside of my bladder, which proved to be rather blandly decorated save for some tastefully arranged skeins of blood vessels on the walls.

Well. what sort of material had I imagined this stent made of, you might ask? Bamboo, perhaps. Perhaps like a reed of a small Pan pipe or the delicate gossamer of an Aeolian harp. Not something which the Mafia would use to ice a canary, certainly. Well, I hadn't really considered it, truthfully. So I'll admit I was pretty surprised to find that it bore a stunning resemblance to a very thick lower-key piano wire! Turns out that's pretty much what it was, only hollow: a steel friggin coil.

Unfortunately, I was so enraptured by the initial image of the stent on the computer screen that I forgot to snap a picture..... and then snapped too late for a good shot. And while I did want a picture for the blog, I'm not committed enough to ask for a replay. Further, to be frank, I'd also say that my photography skills might have been a bit compromised by the distracting activity going on in my cellar. I've always had the worst luck relaxing in those situations (pelvic exams and the whatnot), and today proved no exception. At one point I said that I knew I kept tensing up and I would try to relax a bit. The doctor was very comforting; he said, "Well, it's understandable that you're tense when you have a long steel rod stuck up your private parts." (Oh, who's not used to THAT, right??) I think my photographing the event might have lent more of a party atmosphere than I had initially intended.

Anyway, the stent being removed was THE strangest sensation. I guess we don't often feel foreign objects moving inside of us (oh hush you know what I mean!) and the experience sort of.........well, I can't find the word....maybe obliterated me for a second or two while it was happening, rendering me thoughtless and thus ceasing to exist to myself ....with everything I was being directed to this unzipping inside my left side.

As soon as it was out and I was able to take a leak, I felt IMMEDIATELY better. I had no idea how bad that thing was making me feel.



Wasn't it kind of my doctor to pose with my recently removed stent for my picture, though??