Sunday, January 04, 2009

New Year surprise

I was glad to feel well enough to travel up to Kenilworth to spend New Year baby-sitting grand-daughter Rhiannon while her parents played a gig in a local restaurant. On New Year's night we had a splendid festive meal together, but before the evening was out, kidney stone pains had started up with unusual ferocity. By midnight I was vomiting, and by 1.30 in the morning, I was on my way to A&E in Warwick hospital, as there were no pain killers in the house. Fortunately the calm and cheery staff were able to bring things under control, and were comfortable with the idea of releasing me to return to bed at home, having been made aware that I'm due for more scans and treatment next week. We were back in Kenilworth by 4.30am, and I was able to get some sleep without the analgaesic wearing off.

An early morning X-ray had shown no new stone, and the existing one is hiding out of x-ray range. The radiologist had said that they'd only recently acquired digital x-ray equipment, years after the building of the new hospital facility, and that it would soon have to be replaced as it was't the right kind. He also said they didn't yet have the facility to send an image file electronically to the UHW database server. I was nevertheless surprised at how quickly my personal details had been retrieved from the big GP database once they had my name and date of birth. Some things work, others don't.

When we'd all recovered from our disturbed night, Clare and I decided to return to Cardiff, to be within easy reach of UHW Heath, just in case. There's been no return of the really severe pain since then, just a dull ache, surivivable with the occasional anti infammatory, rather than the really aggressive crisis management analgaesic offered by A&E. But, it's left me groggy and in need of lots of sleep, as if I've been beaten up. So I won't be doing too much for the next few days until I can get to see my GP, and have that long awaited CT scan to find out what's left of the stone supposed to be part-blocking the duct from kidney to bladder.

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