Saturday, June 14, 2008

cursed

I should have expected problems. Who schedules flying their family to their new home on the other side of the world for Friday the 13th? As far as problems go, we were blessed with a monster.

Melissa started feeling pain in her lower back on Thursday morning. We went in to the ER and she was diagnosed with kidney stones. After 6 hours, we were basically told, "They're small ones. Here's some Vicoden. Drink a lot of water any you'll pass them eventually."

We left the ER and for the rest of the afternoon, she was uncomfortable, but not in too much pain. Then around midnight, the pain came back with a vengeance. She suffered through the night with what I understand to be pain equivalent to labor pain. (Although I fortunately have never experienced either.) Apparently, a stone had lodged itself in the duct between her left kidney and her bladder and was blocking all flow. The Urologist said this can make a stone the size of half a grain of rice feel like a knife in your back. The kidney keeps producing urine, but there's no place for it to go. Ouch.

We were fortunate enough to get a good Urologist to help us without any appointment. He performed three different procedures that I can't pronounce (let alone spell) that crushed, dislodged and washed away the stones that were bothering her. Melissa is now sleeping comfortably at the hospital. Jack and I are at a hotel and we'll be able to pick her up in the morning. The doctor says she'll be as good as new in a day or so.

As you may have guessed, we didn't make it to our flight to Singapore this afternoon. I've talked to the travel agent in Singapore already, and we've got a new flight scheduled for Tuesday night. That will go from Houston to Moscow to Singapore and get is in on Thursday at noon.

Jack and I are fine (but he's dealing with the stress better than I am) and are looking forward to seeing a happy, healthy Melissa tomorrow.

In other news, our house in Tomball is now empty and has been professionally cleaned. The packers finished up on Wednesday afternoon and a cleaning crew went through it today. It looks better than it has in years. I expect it will be on the market at some point next week.

I hope your week has been less stressful than ours.

3 comments:

Liza said...

No, not cursed. Just a little ... delayed. Actually if you think about it Melissa got sick at the perfect time because if she'd waited 24 hours she might have needed emergency medical attention on a 20 hour flight or in the middle of the Moscow airport. Now THAT would have been bad. Feel better Melissa! Bon Voyage guys!

Britt said...

Having had both(kidney stones and labor) I would take the labor any day of the week.

Matt said...

This coming from a woman who had to push twice.