Hubby run over & surgery 21

There are people who are waiting to hear from me via email and I apologize. It's been a heck of a week. A week ago today my husband was riding his bicycle the usual 16 mile trek to work and was hit by a car. Long story short, the female driver with two small kids in the admitted she was in the wrong, causing him to t-bone and damage her '09 Camry Hybrid, which his Garmin bike computer recorded he hit her while riding 24 miles per hour. As he hit the ground his head was about to go under the still-moving vehicle so he used his arm to push his head up and out of the way, thus she ran over his hand and not his head.
The next evening, I began having some pretty intense stomach pain. I was angry and stressed about this woman running down my husband, and initially attributed it to worrying. By morning though I knew it was something else, the previous 8 hours of vomiting, shaking, and right-side abdominal and lower back pain being major clues. I woke up my other half and my throaty dehydrated voice said we had to go to the hospital, scaring spouse out of bed and into gear since I rarely say those words.

I was taken back immediately, with low body temperature, vomiting, and a case of the shakes. Since I'm allergic to IV contrast they gave me two cups of it in oral form so a CT could be done. That didn't work either since I vomited after every two sips and they made me start over, EVERY time. After more than 8 hours a CT was done without contrast, though the nurses argued nothing would show up.

The CT showed three kidney stones. The largest at 3.3mm, it was seemingly stuck in the entrance of my right kidney. Two smaller stones were close behind. I was admitted to the hospital and for the next 4 days I was so heavily flooded with IV's the RN's kept a huge supply of saline bags in my room so they would always be prepared for how quickly they were having me go through them. It was nuts.

And long story short for me this time, on the afternoon of hospital stay day 4, I was taken into surgery (#21 for those counting). Interestingly enough the 3 kidney stones were gone so even though the RNs were straining my urine all 4 days, somehow we missed them, even me, and I was still having the weird involuntary contractions when I went (I did notice a couple nurses skip the straining, so who knows). However, the surgery was not a waste because they found my kidney was shutting down; the biggest stone had been stuck in the entry for so long the kidney became infected & enlarged, and although the stone was gone, the entryway was so nasty it was responsible for closing it off. They used a scope to search all around inside my kidney, and put in a stent through the opening so nasty stuff could come and go from the kidney and get it working today.

It has sure made me stop taking advantage of how much work these two little organs do, that's for sure. It amazes me that this little organ is responsible for so much...and can be this incredibly painful. I know the surgeon stuck something inside my kidney and dug around looking for stuff, but good grief this is ridiculous. It feels like someone stomped on my kidney and then used it as a soccer ball.

It's taken ages to write all this because I keep falling asleep. I have waves of gratitude for those moments of peace, in between the times of pain when it seems it will never end. I keep reminding myself though it can always be worse. There are always people out there that are worse off. Hubby could have been injured terribly when hit by that car, and my kidney closing off could have happened long ago, when it would have been too far gone to save it from irreparable damage. I hope it will kick back into gear.

So yes it's been another wild and crazy ride around here for the last week, but we will come through it stronger as always.