January 2012: Good Riddance

Is it just us, or.....

HAS THIS BEEN THE WORST MONTH IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE?!

Ok, maybe that's a little extreme....worst month of the history of the planet? That's better.

I am truly starting to believe that those crazy Mayans were onto something with their calendar, because so far 2012 has been less than bueno.
It all started with the first weekend of the month/year. Jordan had been complaining about fatigue and never feeling as though he was getting enough rest. He felt pretty nasty and thought that maybe he had walking pneumonia. After a pretty lousy Friday night and Saturday morning we decided to go to the Urgent Care center.....four hours, one x-ray, and several blood tests later we left the clinic with Jordan's diagnosis of mono. D'oh! The timing was less than perfect because Jordan just began his ER rotation which had several night shifts. Jordan continuously apologized for "wasting [my] Saturday" at the clinic with him. I told him I'm sure there will a time when he'll have to spend hours in a hospital with me... when I said this, I was thinking in about a few years when we have a baby; not the following weekend.

Fast forward to the following Monday after the Urgent Care visit. I had a follow up appointment with my Urologist to see how my lithotripsy went in December (In October I was diagnosed with a huge kidney stone and had a pretty easy procedure done in December to shatter it. Since then, I experienced very little pain and was considering myself lucky. Ok, back to the story.) My doctor told me the reason that I had no pain was because nothing happened with kidney stone. It was in the exact same place and did not look any different. Double D'oh! He explained that in order to get it out he would need to get all up in my bid'ness, send a tiny laser up to my kidney and zap the stone. He said that it wouldn't be a big deal and I believed him. I scheduled the procedure for the following Friday (which was Friday the 13th...I should have known).

I was pretty nervous going through the whole laser thingy. Jordan fulfilled my prophecy by staying in the hospital with me all afternoon for it. Before I was knocked out, my doctor talked to me a little and explained that the laser surgery would be easy and only about an hour. Then I fell asleep. I woke up in the recovery room with really sharp pain in my back and lower stomach. The nurses kept politely asking me to stay still. I guess I was being pretty wiggly as I moaned. I also fell back asleep after they shot morphine into my iv. Next I woke up in a different room with Jordan. Jordan explained that the reason I was in unexpected pain is because when my doctor got up to my kidney he realized that I had Infundibular Stenosis, which is a fancy way of saying that my kidney tube that goes from my kidney to my ureter was abnormally small. It was preventing my kidney stone (and other calculus) from passing, so he had to use the lasor to essentially carve out the tubing and make it bigger. Hence, the pain. Not to sound dramatic, but the following weekend I experienced the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I am officially terrified of childbirth.

The next week I had to miss three days of work, which drained me of vacation days. Boo. Jordan was able to stay home with me for several of those days. Once Friday (one week after the surgery) came, I was feeling a little better and actually left my apartment.

The following week I started to have an increase in pain in my back and in my bladder area. It also stung super bad to pee....which lead to a diagnosis of a urinary tract infection. Boo. So now I am on more pills for that. Also, I had a stent placed in me that had to stay in there for two weeks. When I called my doctor's nurse to ask if I could pull it out (which was the plan), she said yes and warned me that I would need more pain killers to curb the inevitable bladder spasms I would experienced. Yay.

So yeah...January has not been so fun. But despite the crappiness of it all, there were some positives.

My boss was super understanding and sympathetic toward me. She eased my anxiety about missing work.

My mother in law was an amazing help. She brought us dinner several times, helped me with errands, brought me tons of candy, did our grocery shopping, and bought me my new best friend (my heating pad).

Jordan was a HUGE help and never complained once. He slept on the couch next to me (it hurt too bad to sleep in our bed) and would set his alarm for every 3 hours to give me my medicine- even in the middle of the night. He gave a ton of back rubs and would help me go to the bathroom over and over. I really relied on him for the first 3 days for just about everything.

Lastly, I am so grateful for my doctor's nurse. I called her several times (usually in tears) asking about symptoms and help. She was very patient with me and always called me back right away. I'm sure she never wants to see me again after this.

Our good friends had their very first baby and we got to see the new little family. That was a fun reminder that there are some cool things about the hospital too.

So that was our month. There are only three days left of it. Bring on February!!