There are no words big enough to describe the pain…
No matter. I need help. NOW!!! If I wasn’t scared to death of Covid at the time, I would have rushed to the emergency department.
Instead, I squeezed myself into my oncologist’s schedule.
In the meantime, my recent Eyes to Thighs PET Scan report came in.
Summary Report: Some lymph nodes, deeply buried in my abdomen, became so enormous that they were compressing my left ureter (the tube that connects each kidney to your bladder). Diagnosis: Hydronephrosis. In layman’s terms, my left kidney was swollen and dying because it couldn’t drain normally. That’s why I had that horrible taste in my mouth. That’s why the horrible reflux persisted. That’s why my left leg was swollen. That’s why I was in constant, horrific pain.
Finally an answer.
Things moved quickly from there.
We hit the pain harder with opioids, jumped on the inflammation with steroids, and pushed to have a stent installed in my left ureter to allow my left kidney to drain properly. A low-risk Interventional Radiology (IR) procedure. Done for kidney stones all the time. Twilight sedation. Fully expecting to go home the same day.
No big deal, right?
Wrong.
Shocked awake, not from a nightmare, but into a nightmare. Screaming through my clenched teeth as I realize I’m hospitalized. Blood and urine squirting everywhere. Where’s the damn emergency button? My roommate, who I’d yet to meet, presses his. The angels known as nurses were there in a matter of seconds.