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In Which the Medical Marathon Continues
Mar. 14th, 2018 08:42 pmAbout a quarter til noon today someone phones up at home. I rarely pick up the home phone during business hours, but K. thankfully does and tells me Kaiser is calling.
It's someone over in the ESWL department, and she's worried that they haven't had a look at the position of the kidney stone since I got the CT scan, which was just more than two weeks ago. She's even more worried when I say I haven't really had any pain recently.
See, the fear is that the kidney stone has passed. Now, I find it really unlikely that a 7mm kidney stone passed, like a ship, in the night, without me noticing. But I understand the fear. I'm actually most annoyed about going back to Kaiser a day after I was there for a bunch of tests.
But back to Kaiser I go.
It's another $55 for the x-ray, another few mSvs depending on how many shots they took (but that's nothing compared to the CT).
I have another salad at their cafeteria, and when I get home I call ESWL. I have to give them big points for how often I've gotten real people on the phone. I talk to the ESWL person and she asks me to wait, calls up the x-rays, and says, yes, the kidney stone is still there.
So back to where we were an hour and half earlier.
She does note that the kidney stone pretty much hasn't moved since the previous scan. (I'm not sure if she means since the x-ray or the CT, but I also know those show the stone at about the same point, so it's the same thing.) That pretty much validates my decision to have the ESWL done. Not only will it have been a month without the stone passing, but it'll also have been three weeks without it moving.
This all is also why I've had not much pain in these last three weeks, including during my trip down to Santa Barbara.
I have a feeling I'm going to be reminded of what that pain feels like on Friday, when they break the stone up, and the shrapnel starts raining down.
It's someone over in the ESWL department, and she's worried that they haven't had a look at the position of the kidney stone since I got the CT scan, which was just more than two weeks ago. She's even more worried when I say I haven't really had any pain recently.
See, the fear is that the kidney stone has passed. Now, I find it really unlikely that a 7mm kidney stone passed, like a ship, in the night, without me noticing. But I understand the fear. I'm actually most annoyed about going back to Kaiser a day after I was there for a bunch of tests.
But back to Kaiser I go.
It's another $55 for the x-ray, another few mSvs depending on how many shots they took (but that's nothing compared to the CT).
I have another salad at their cafeteria, and when I get home I call ESWL. I have to give them big points for how often I've gotten real people on the phone. I talk to the ESWL person and she asks me to wait, calls up the x-rays, and says, yes, the kidney stone is still there.
So back to where we were an hour and half earlier.
She does note that the kidney stone pretty much hasn't moved since the previous scan. (I'm not sure if she means since the x-ray or the CT, but I also know those show the stone at about the same point, so it's the same thing.) That pretty much validates my decision to have the ESWL done. Not only will it have been a month without the stone passing, but it'll also have been three weeks without it moving.
This all is also why I've had not much pain in these last three weeks, including during my trip down to Santa Barbara.
I have a feeling I'm going to be reminded of what that pain feels like on Friday, when they break the stone up, and the shrapnel starts raining down.