Surgery

Well usually I like to attach pictures to all my posts, but I figured you wouldn't want to see any pictures of this. Last Monday I had surgery to fix a UPJ obstruction in my kidney. Here's the whole story, and sorry for the length but I am writing this also for myself so I will remember.

Most of you know that I have had problems with my right hip for over three years now. A few months ago my physical therapist (who is wonderful, a true gift from Jesus) urged me to get an MRI done on my back to be sure there wasn't something wrong with my back that was referring pain out to my hip (I had had an MRI done on my hip before, but never my back). So I was thankful to find one of my many doctors give me a referral for the MRI. The results showed that there was nothing wrong with my back, however, in the picture they did see something else. I remember when the tech pulled me out of the MRI machine she said, "Have you ever had any problems with your kidney?" She mentioned they saw some dialation there and the neurosurgeon would follow up with me.

I was then referred to a urologist who said that the blockage looked pretty significant, and asked me if I had pain in my kidney area when I drank alcohol. I told him I don't ever really drink, and he mentioned that is when people usually come to him with these kind of problems is in college when they start to drink a lot. Somehow the alcohol does a number on your kidneys if you have a UPJ obstruction. I guess I should have drank more... ha!

But the urologist, Dr. Doer, also prefers to see this kind of thing on a CT scan better than an MRI. So I went in for a CT scan and another renal scan called a lasik flush. The results of the CT scan made it look like the blockage was not too terribly bad at this point. It didn't warrant surgery yet but needed to be monitored. I still got the lasik flush done, which was where I laid under a camera that took pictures of my kidneys while they filled with saline and then were flushed with lasik. When I got the results back from that, it showed that my right kidney hardly flushed at all, so that test told the doctor I needed surgery. This was mid- October.

The surgery would be done with a robot so I would have three small incisions (as well as a drain) to cut the ureter from around the blood vessels that were restricting it's flow. Then they would re-attach the ureter so everything would flow freely. This type of surgery would take 3 hours or so, and require a 2-3 day hospital stay to make sure everything was up and flowing well. 

At first I told him I couldn't do the surgery now because we were moving the middle of November, plus we already had a Disney trip planned so we automatically lost one week. He told me that was okay but I would need to get with a urologist in DC to continue to be monitored and have some lasik flushes done again (it was not a fun test, believe me. and I almost fainted at the end). However, as we got to thinking about it, we figured that as inconvient as it was, it may make the most sense to do it now. Dave doesn't have to be at work at all, we have a lot of support here from our church and friends, and we have excellent health coverage. So we opted to do the surgery on November 5th.

The day before surgery I had to drink a laxative to clean me out. Not fun. On Monday morning our neighbor came to stay with the kids while Dave took me to the hospital. Dr. Doer came to talk to me and he said he wasn't sure he was going to do the procedure. He looked at my CT scans again and wasn't 100% convinced I needed to do this right now. He said they would put me under, take me back, put a stint in and shoot dye up me to see the actual blockage as best they can. Then he would either go ahead with the procedure or stop right there end things. I prayed that he would just do it because I didn't want to repeat the same costly tests every three months just to end up being operated on a few months later. So while the nurse was getting the IV in me I almost fainted (very squeemish), so I got put to sleep very quickly.

I woke up after the procedure and felt a lot of pain in my abdomen and thought to myself, "I guess he did it!" They wheeled me back to my recovery room where I saw Dave who told me, "Hi Beautiful!" and saw the doctor. Dr. Doer said that they found a fiberous band of tissue that was over my ureter causing the obstruction. He was really glad they did the surgery because the obstruction was pretty bad and I could have had (in his words) a "dead kidney" in about a year's time.

The recovery in the hospital was honestly worse than I thought. I was in a lot of pain, I didn't eat anything from Saturday night through Thursday morning, and I was also having a lot of back pain so I couldn't get comfortable. I remember the pain and wondering how long it would take to feel normal again. I laid there and watched TV and read most of the day, with a few walks down the hall when I felt up for it. I was grateful for some visitors from my church, from friends, and Dave when he brought the boys.

It look awhile for my bowels to begin working, so they kept me an extra day. I was a bit dissapointed in that but of course I trusted the doctor and now I realize that extra day of rest was really good for me. Because, in case you didn't know, the movers were here at our house packing all of our stuff! So it wouldn't have been good for me to be home there either.

When they wheeled me out to the car on Thursday to meet Dave and the boys I started crying pretty bad. It was so emotional to leave that place. I was so grateful that we got this done, but it was so hard, and I was going home to an empty house where we would have to say goodbye to everyone so soon. I think it made the boys sad to see me so emotional but I just couldn't help it.

Dave has been so great in all of this. He had to juggle dealing with me, the movers, getting the kids to school and different people's homes, and outprocessing from the Air Force at the same time. He really was superman. Sadly, last night John and Dave got the stomach bug, so they were both throwing up all night, while keeping me far away so I didn't get the bug. I am still bruised and sore, I can't imagine having a stomach bug on top of it.

And of course we are grateful to God for His strength and provision, and we look forward to how He will provide for us in this upcoming (very soon!) move.