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This last week has been a mix of good and bad for me, just like the rest of the world, although for more personal reasons. The academic things I've struggled through to complete (two exams) have ended well (92% and 100%). On the other hand, the medical file has taken a turn for the more painful. On the third hand, I've arranged two sets of docs to be looking at my health. On the fourth hand, things are going well with my sweet heart. It really is a mixed bag.
Last Wednesday night, I started to get sore in the kidneys. I've had this on and off the last year, short bouts that were usually addressed with drinking a bunch of water and sometimes with a tylenol 1. The feeling is generally more like an ache than a stabbing pain and usually isn't severe enough to do more than make you uncomfortable.
What came Wednesday was more pronounced although still not stabbing. It was not amenable to tylenol 1s or enough water (1.5 - 2 liters a day exclusive of other fluids) as it kept up. It disrupted my sleeping patterns pretty badly. By Friday, it wasn't relenting, so I went to see the walk-in doctor and she said I should talk to my urologist again to see if I was within the 1 year follow-up period to avoid a new referral. That's about all they can do since walk-in clinics here don't prescribe anything strong enough to dent a real attack.
Wednesday through Sunday were times I was supposed to be writing 4 exams in my Java Enterprise Developer course. I tried studying, but I couldn't sit in one position for long and any posture other than prone was not very good. I was reading lines in the text 3 to 5 times trying to make much sense of them and retention and recall were significantly sub par. I didn't get to do much useful studying until Saturday night and I should have been completed 3 of the 4 exams by then.
Sunday, I did study for an successfully execute two of the tests. The water loading helped a bit... I was sore but managed a 23 hour day of work. I did part of a third test, but the combination of fatigue, long-form answers, the kidney twinging, and my recently-sliced up and not yet fully healed finger meant I wasn't completing the test in the time allocated. My typing accuracy was poor with the finger and my speed is way down and the long form answers requiring very precise syntax were just not being completed in any sort of timely fashion.
I never did get to that 4th exam at all.
Provisions are being made to let me have some more time on the 3rd and to take the 4th. The college has a mostly-sane policy of requiring a doctor's note, but that meant another office visit and the walk-in doctor can't say too much other than 'patient was unwell this date to that date'.
I have an appointment to see the urologist again on the 26th of November which is great (assuming I don't get a full-fledged stone attack before then). I have an appointment with a new G.P. on the 2nd of December when he becomes my G.P. Hopefully one of these two steps will result in my getting sufficient painkillers to weather any attacks at home (has to be something like morphine as weaker stuff just can't control the pain of a full fledged attack and apparently the pain actually impedes the passing of the stone).
If anything happens between now and then, it'll be off to emergency. Today, the kidney has been (at least in the morning) more sharply painful and I've got some radiated discomfort. That's the kind of sensations I had when I did have a stone doing its thing in my kidney last year which is part of what has me a bit worried about another full-fledged attack.
I've put myself on an alpha blocker (leftover from last year) called Teva-Terasozin to help dilate the kidney passages. Hopefully that'll help.
Catherine is kind of scared by this whole thing and I get that. It's unpleasant. But people live with this stuff (stay home, medicate when there is an attack) for decades. It's no fun, but it is a well-understood thing. I wouldn't even worry about going to the hospital if I had sufficient pain meds at home, but the concerns about people abusing narcotics (possibly valid) have made prescriptions hard to come by and thus the walk-in clinics can't help.
The school and I will come to an accommodation. My kidney and I will survive this. I'm still lucky to have Catherine, overall health, and good friends and family and to be studying interesting stuff at school. I'm not letting this dampen my sense of life being a good thing.
