Catching Up

Last Friday the 15th I started the morning early by greeting my friends who work in the out-patient department at our local hospital. I'm used to seeing them when I'm wearing a ID tag as chaplain. This time I was wearing the ID wristband of a patient.

It was finally time to be done with the kidney stone I first referenced back in September. It made it quite clear that it was going no where of it's own accord. Unfortunately, the only option left because of location and size was cystoscopy...not exactly a square peg in a round hole but you get the idea.

I applaud anesthesiologist! Mine helped me go to a very nice place to rest quietly while everybody else went to work to get that little bad boy out. I applaud the recovery room nurse who, when I got back from the nice place I'd been, was ready with a syringe of morphine to ease the transition into a painful reality. Since the stone had grown to 7mm and the tube where it was residing is only 2mm, it had become partially embedded and required that a stent be left behind. A craggy stone was gone but another foreign object, smooth though it is, remains for a time.

One memorable conversation from the morning was with the MD serving as anesthesiologist. She is a beautiful young woman who, at first glance, looks like she just came off the sidelines of a college football game and changed from her cheerleading uniform into her scrubs. Friendly, happy, smart and engaged. This was no Valley Girl. After the usual introductory niceties, she said, "Your chart is marked "healthy and normal". You look healthy and normal but I see a list of several medications that suggest otherwise." Kim piped up, "He's a healthy, normal man with multiple sclerosis." The light came on for her and a lively discussion on the role each individual medication played in my course of treatment ensued in which she was delighted in her role as "student" to an area that she had some professional knowledge but very little personal exposure. I deeply appreciate a physician that does not bluster or cover over things he or she doesn't know and sees a patient as someone who can teach them.