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Saturday 7 April 2012

Harper/McGuinty 'bushrat' kidneystone operation (graphic content!)


A particularly persistent kidney stone has been bothering me since mid-January. As I've suffered many kidney stone episodes since my first hospitalization around 1980, I was able to follow its progress through my urinary tract with some degree of awareness.

                                                  ................................. 

When Chase & I got to my  ZenRiver Gardens retreat I had to pee, & then the weak, very restricted urine flow suddenly & surprisingly shot the stone the length of my penis!!! ... argggggggggggggggggghh! ... but it didn't exit ... I could see this jagged, poisonous looking, black lump at the exit of my urethra - but it wouldn't drop out, like stones usually do.

So I did the sensible thing, & drank a beer, with hopes of pushing the stone to its final exit with a beer blast of pee. I also took a 500 mg Tylenol, then another - and I couldn't stop myself from inspecting, with much horror, the blood dripping from the tip of my works. As I felt around, I realized it might be a much larger stone than I've had in the past - usually they're the size of a BB pellet when you pass them, sometimes even smaller.

 But this was some kind of monster kidney stone - no exaggeration - I considered driving to an emergency ward, which truly would have been the sensible thing to do - but then I've never let the sensible get in the way. So like some crazy old bushrat, I finished my beer, stopping several times to scare myself with the jagged black horror starting to emerge.

 After the beer & the Tyelnols & several unsuccessful attempts to pry the stone out, I managed to grip the monster with my fingertips & pull it out!!!! It's over half an inch long (5/8 inch) and over a 1/4 inch wide  (3/8ths of an inch). CRAZY SELF OPERATION! I feel I've joined the company of the hiker guy who hacked off his trapped arm in the desert canyon several years ago.

 apologies for the graphics, but still can't believe I did this ...

 back home now & prepping some dinner & drinking a glass of wine - now I don't have to keep pouring beer thru my system in attempts to flush the bastard out ...

1 comment:

Weed said...

i can understand you were to busy to video the operation, but disappointed not to see pics, if not of the extraction process, then at least the extracted stone :) no matter, well done anyway!