What an exciting day! I did not sleep too well last night, mainly because of a busy brain, dreading the day to come.
But as usual, come the later, early hours sleep arrived.
I had bags to pack, dogs to walk, a kitchen to tidy and rubbish to put out. And clean sheets to put away. All before around 08.30.
But I made it and made my way through the Streatley Traffic lights garbage of a queue to pick up the dogs and then we went for a ball walk at Streatley Rec, in near rain.
Well queues are only to be expected if I am silly enough to time my travel yo coincide with the school run. And the bin men.
I returned to the Illis whereby now the school run was over and the bin men were blocking someone else’s road, and waited with the dogs until Penny arrived hot foot from Devon. Together, we waited a bit more of a while and set off for the RBH for the surgeon to have a second go at removing the remains of the kidney stone.
The hospital car park was not playing ball,
and Pen dropped me off, whilst she toured the place looking for an available space.
This time, the Adult Day Surgery ward was much busier – last time I was in splendid isolation in an overspill ward.
I chatted with the anaesthetist and mentioned how sick I had been on the previous occasion. She said she would change the anaesthetic used (it seems to have worked) but she had said could not guarantee anything.
Once awake, no nausea, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands (or teeth) on the toast that I was offered post-op. No sickness this time. But then the morphine might be helping
But I did wake up with a bit of a bump in Recovery because I thought I was on holiday in the sun somewhere. And I obviously was not. I was awoken with the words that all had gone well and the stone was removed. A new stent is in place which will be removed in two weeks.. The only medication is 3 times as much water as usual, ( over 3 extra pints!) and finish the antibiotics.
That was the middle case scenario that had been hinted at before I went into surgery. The best case scenario, was total removal and a stent with a string that I would pull out myself after five days. The worst case was that they could not remove all of the remainder of the stone and I would be back on repeat.
However the most interesting nugget of information was that large kidney stones, that have been there a long time, allow bacteria to colonise them which means UTIs become a permanent feature. I reckon that’s me!
But hey, at now 21.00 or so, my girls reckon that I’m high on the dose of morphine so kindly given.
Now – as for the weasel / stoat. Absent Dave (who is currently in Stockholm) sent this message, yesterday evening:
Freddie just arrived on the back doormat with a little snack. It looked a bit big for a mouse then as I was telling Freddie off, it suddenly woke up and ran round the back of the shoe cupboard. Looked like a little stoat or something…
Something to look forward to. And we did.
Before leaving for the RBH, we kept hearing a succession of little squeaks . But H was not overly interested , until we ventured into their lobby, where the aforementioned stoat/ weasel had appeared yesterday. Then Pen noticed the cutest little face poking out from behind the shoe cupboard and quickly disappeared. By now, H was out there eagerly sniffing a random trail round the utility room. But the cutest face had disappeared behind the shoe storage.
So we notified Ali ( at work in Reading) the happy news of a loose rodent and left. She was delighted to hear this. We, however, were not sure if the squeak noises were from a different rodent or the stoat/weasel. Well at least it gave Pen and Ali good cause for speculative and amusing texts whilst I was being treated. And research to do in stoat noises and appearances. The word ‘rat’ was carefully avoided.
It is still there maybe. I expect the squeaks will inform us.
The girls relaxed and we tucked into sizeable helpings of the shepherd’s pie I had made yesterday. Or Pen and I did, Ali was more restrained. Fleur had eaten her vegetarian version earlier.
It’s now 06.30 on the morning after…
I have been advised that I must seriously and importantly drink THREE EXTRA PINTS OF FLUID PER DAY for the next three days. That will put paid to any sort of dog walk longer than about 5 minutes, unless it is round and round a public convenience!
Foolishly, I downed the first pint before coming to bed. Amazingly, I awoke only ONCE before 06.00, to go to the loo. Unheard of recently! Maybe my body was just dehydrated from the day before. I’m not currently feeling the new stent too much or as I lie down.
So to summarise … all good on the medical front; RBH, ( with reservations about pre-Op dept) have been utterly amazing, and I am beyond grateful.
And thank you wonderful daughters – you have had a day each through surgery with me now! At least Pen was not treated to my projectile empty
And as for the woat /steasel – well who knows? Perhaps we will find out later.
Thought for the day
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