stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2017-11-11 08:07 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2017-11-11 08:07 pm
Entry tags:
Pulling the Stent
Originally I'd hoped to be back at work, post-op, on Friday. (My last operation was Wednesday.) But Thursday during the day, it became very clear I wouldn't survive a day teaching. I want to punch all the people who say, "You can return to normal activities the next day." It's complete bullshit. I couldn't walk more than twenty or thirty steps without needing to rest, and I =hurt= all the time. The pain and the anesthesia feed the depression, and to top it off, I'm still feeling I've been assaulted and violated over and over. I get nightmares sometimes. I don't get why they lie like this. It would be easy to say, "You'll feel tired and dragged out for three or four days, so don't make plans." "Normal activities," my ass.
Xanax helps, in a short term. Man, you take one of these before bed and you sleep hard! And I've started taking Zoloft, but that'll take a while to start working.
Anyway, originally the doctor had said this final stent would, like the others, remain inside me for at least a week, news that always made my legs shake and my stomach clench. Ever since September 13, I've only gone a week without a stent. That's nearly two months living with excruciating, debilitating pain, burying my face in a towel or biting my sleeve whenever I went to the bathroom to hold in the screams. Everybody always said, "You're almost done! You'll be free of it any day!" And they were lying, every one of them. When you're in agony, ten seconds feels like a year. I got so tired of hearing the "almost done" lie. Don't tell me I'm "almost done." Tell me what I can do to stop the pain.
To top it off, kidney stone victims are always told, "Drink lots and lots and lots of fluid." So you have to go to the bathroom more and more and more often, and every extra trip to the toilet is time in a torture chamber with red hot irons and spikes in your side.
So it was some nicer news that this last stent could come out Friday. Two days of screaming pain instead of seven or ten. Hey, a blessing!
As I mentioned in a previous entry, this stent had strings attached to it. Two thin nylon strings trailed from my urethra and were looped back over my genitals to be taped down. The shithead (and I suspect it was a woman, since a man wouldn't have made this mistake) who did the taping didn't allow near enough slack, which meant I dealt with yet more pain a couple times on Wednesday night, and Thursday Darwin and I had to find a way to retape the whole thing without actually pulling it out. This hurt quite a lot as well--every tiny tug was a jolt of pain. It didn't help that I ended up talking to an ignorant, insensitive, utterly stupid nurse on the phone about it and she assumed I was in pain was because I was "having relations" and not being a normal male.
However, I got an appointment scheduled for Friday morning. Technically, I could have pulled the stent out myself, but the very thought made me shake and freak so much that I needed someone else to do it for me. Because of this fear, Dr. L-- gave me a scrip for Valium to take beforehand.
Friday, Darwin absolutely had to go to work--he's missed a lot of it because of me--so I drove myself down to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Up in the urology department, a nurse showed me into an exam room. She took my vitals, and wonder of wonders, my blood pressure was way down. At other visits, my pressure was high enough to qualify me for hypertension, but it was all stress. Between the Valium and the knowledge the worst was done, my blood pressure had normalized itself.
"I'd like a man to do this for me, please," I told the nurse.
"We don't have any male nurses on staff," she said regretfully. "I'm very sorry, but--hey, wait." She left the room.
A few minutes later, a Stunningly Handsome Young Man entered. He could have been an Abercrombie & Fitch model, and he had the biggest blue eyes even the heavens can imagine. For the second time, I thought maybe the universe was giving me something nice in return for all the shit, however small.
He introduced himself as Dr. J-- (a resident, I gathered), and he said he'd take the stent out. He gave me a cursory examination. "This is taped down really well," he observed. Yeah. I should train for the OR.
Carefully, he worked the tape free, then said, "Do you want it fast or slow?"
"Whichever will be the least painful," I said.
He pulled. I felt the stent slide down my insides and out my body, and oh, it hurt! But it only was only for about three seconds, and far, far less painful than injecting ineffective painkillers into my urethra, going up there with a scope, grabbing the stent, and pulling the whole thing out. Why the fuck the string method isn't standard, I don't know.
I did need a moment to recover, though. It was definitely less painful, but absolutely no fun.
I thanked the resident, went home, and crashed for an hour. Then I picked Max up from school and crashed for two hours. I was completely exhausted.
Now, however, I'm "only" on kidney stone watch. Every year, I'm on track to get an x-ray to check for more of them.
And I'm going to fucking sue my original G.P. for putting me on the meds that started all this.
Xanax helps, in a short term. Man, you take one of these before bed and you sleep hard! And I've started taking Zoloft, but that'll take a while to start working.
Anyway, originally the doctor had said this final stent would, like the others, remain inside me for at least a week, news that always made my legs shake and my stomach clench. Ever since September 13, I've only gone a week without a stent. That's nearly two months living with excruciating, debilitating pain, burying my face in a towel or biting my sleeve whenever I went to the bathroom to hold in the screams. Everybody always said, "You're almost done! You'll be free of it any day!" And they were lying, every one of them. When you're in agony, ten seconds feels like a year. I got so tired of hearing the "almost done" lie. Don't tell me I'm "almost done." Tell me what I can do to stop the pain.
To top it off, kidney stone victims are always told, "Drink lots and lots and lots of fluid." So you have to go to the bathroom more and more and more often, and every extra trip to the toilet is time in a torture chamber with red hot irons and spikes in your side.
So it was some nicer news that this last stent could come out Friday. Two days of screaming pain instead of seven or ten. Hey, a blessing!
As I mentioned in a previous entry, this stent had strings attached to it. Two thin nylon strings trailed from my urethra and were looped back over my genitals to be taped down. The shithead (and I suspect it was a woman, since a man wouldn't have made this mistake) who did the taping didn't allow near enough slack, which meant I dealt with yet more pain a couple times on Wednesday night, and Thursday Darwin and I had to find a way to retape the whole thing without actually pulling it out. This hurt quite a lot as well--every tiny tug was a jolt of pain. It didn't help that I ended up talking to an ignorant, insensitive, utterly stupid nurse on the phone about it and she assumed I was in pain was because I was "having relations" and not being a normal male.
However, I got an appointment scheduled for Friday morning. Technically, I could have pulled the stent out myself, but the very thought made me shake and freak so much that I needed someone else to do it for me. Because of this fear, Dr. L-- gave me a scrip for Valium to take beforehand.
Friday, Darwin absolutely had to go to work--he's missed a lot of it because of me--so I drove myself down to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Up in the urology department, a nurse showed me into an exam room. She took my vitals, and wonder of wonders, my blood pressure was way down. At other visits, my pressure was high enough to qualify me for hypertension, but it was all stress. Between the Valium and the knowledge the worst was done, my blood pressure had normalized itself.
"I'd like a man to do this for me, please," I told the nurse.
"We don't have any male nurses on staff," she said regretfully. "I'm very sorry, but--hey, wait." She left the room.
A few minutes later, a Stunningly Handsome Young Man entered. He could have been an Abercrombie & Fitch model, and he had the biggest blue eyes even the heavens can imagine. For the second time, I thought maybe the universe was giving me something nice in return for all the shit, however small.
He introduced himself as Dr. J-- (a resident, I gathered), and he said he'd take the stent out. He gave me a cursory examination. "This is taped down really well," he observed. Yeah. I should train for the OR.
Carefully, he worked the tape free, then said, "Do you want it fast or slow?"
"Whichever will be the least painful," I said.
He pulled. I felt the stent slide down my insides and out my body, and oh, it hurt! But it only was only for about three seconds, and far, far less painful than injecting ineffective painkillers into my urethra, going up there with a scope, grabbing the stent, and pulling the whole thing out. Why the fuck the string method isn't standard, I don't know.
I did need a moment to recover, though. It was definitely less painful, but absolutely no fun.
I thanked the resident, went home, and crashed for an hour. Then I picked Max up from school and crashed for two hours. I was completely exhausted.
Now, however, I'm "only" on kidney stone watch. Every year, I'm on track to get an x-ray to check for more of them.
And I'm going to fucking sue my original G.P. for putting me on the meds that started all this.