Friday, March 2, 2012

Bleepin' Stones

We arrived at the ER, and the triage nurse took a blood pressure reading of 189/110. "That can't be right," was her only response.

Well, guess what. It WAS right. We took him back, they drew blood and took special xrays. The lab work came back normal for someone with a raging bladder infection. The main problem was that I know my son and this most definitely was farther reaching than a simple bladder infection. I could tell this by the mere fact that he'd been trying to throw up 4-5 times a day and he was constantly moaning.

I have never felt such condescension from a medical professional--and that's saying something considering the many I've dealt with over the years--in fact, he wouldn't even look at me and only addressed Mr. O. Mr. O kept deferring to me since I'm the one who tackles everything medically related for each of our kids. Any time I would ask "Dr. Grumpy Bedside Manner" a question, everyone in the room could sense his exasperation and practically feel his eyes rolling.

Finally, I asked him about the puffiness in Ty's abdomen (which just happened to be in the same location as his former tumor), and the doctor just shrugged me off, saying there was nothing on the labs to indicate a problem there. Maddening!

I suggested that just as a precaution, we should run a CT scan to rule out the possibility that his tumor was back. His response? "You do realize that one CT scan is the same amount of radiation as exposing your son to over 150 chest x-rays? I mean, do you really want to put him through that?"

Blink, blink.

I felt like being snappish right back and telling him that yes, I'd like to expose my son to as much radiation as possible. Anyway, the important thing is that he finally listened to me.

I knew something was up when they ran him through the CT three separate times, and I'll tell you what...Dr. "God" sure changed his bedside manner toward me after he saw the results.

It turned out that Ty has a 22 mm kidney stone completely blocking his right ureter. In case you have no idea, that's HUGE. He also has a 14 mm stone trapped in his kidney (as well as several others)  and a "smaller stone in his left kidney.
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The ER doctor was actually nice to me afterwards. He would say things like "That's a good question," whenever I asked him something. Can you believe they had been going to send us home?

Instead they rushed him right back to Angio and placed a Nephrostomy tube into his kidney. The idea is that now the urine can come directly out of the kidney, through the tube, and into a drainage bag. Eventually the kidney swelling will go down and he can have surgery to remove the stones.

While he was in the hospital, he received two antibiotics via IV. And he never threw up once he got some relief. Since he's been home he's only run a low-grade fever once, thrown up about 4 times, and (on the upside) has developed a taste for chocolate milk and is enjoying his old standby - Dr. Pepper.

All told, we spent five days in the hospital and Urology completely dropped the ball on us. Good thing we have an appointment to see the Dr. on Monday.