It all started out as a normal Friday. But that all changed when I woke up at around 3 AM. I was having reasonably severe pains in my lower abdomen on both the right and left sides. The pain was in the front, not the side or lower back. That led my wife, a former ambulance driver, to rule out kidney problems. I tried to lie down and go back to sleep, but the pain was strong enough to prevent that from happening.
So we decided to go to a nearby emergency clinic. According to our local directory it should have been open. But when we arrived we found a notice on the door that their “new” hours had them opening at 9 AM. The notice was dated from last April. So we drove into Jerusalem to a “real” hospital. Opening a file took only a couple of minutes. Then the first session of waiting began. My wife and I sat for what seemed like a long time. but was actually only about 10 minutes. The triage room nurse took my vital signs (temperature, blood pressure, etc) and inserted a Venflon into a vein on my left arm. The Venflon is like a catheter with a valve that allowed him to take blood for the first of several tests, and remained in place so the process could be repeated later, if necessary, without having to poke me with another needle. Now it was time for our next session of waiting.
We were directed to the surgical emergencies clinic and sat down to wait to be called. It wasn’t like we had much choice. There wasn’t anyone at the clinic reception desk. We asked a passing nurse. and were told just to sit down until they got to us. Eventually I was called in to be seen by a real doctor. She reviewed the file, asked some of the same questions (and a few new ones) and sent me back to sit and wait for the on duty urology specialist. Another session of waiting that seemed to go on forever because of the continuing pain.
The urologist finally shower up. One of his first requests was, naturally, for a urine sample. The lab work was done swiftly. The first sample was somehow contaminated and indicated that I had some kind of infection that was not connected to the pain I was feeling. The urologists sensed that something was amiss nd I had to give another sample for a retest. This time it came back clean. By now the doctor had a preliminary diagnosis of kidney stones and he ordered a CT scan for confirmation. Meanwhile, they injected a pain killer directly into my vein through the Venflon. Then I was given a jug of water to drink. Oh, One doesn’t just gulp all the liquid at once. You pour it into a little cup and sip it. The pace is supposed to be one cup every five minutes. The jug contained enough liquid to make this process take about 45 minutes. Then it was time for another session of waiting. This time it was to wait to get the CT scan.
Meanwhile, one of our children had been in touch, and on hearing we were in the emergency room, she came to see what was going on. She brought some things to munch on, but I didn’t get to eat anything because it was still not certain that I would not be going to surgery. Our daughter also brought a cup of hot coffee for my wife. When I say hot coffee, I mean HOT coffee. My wife took her first sip and it burned her tongue.
The queue for the CT was not long. Was called in and placed on the bed of the machine. The Venflon, once again, proved useful. Another bit of some liquid was inserted through it. Whatever the material was, it gave me a brief feeling of warmth. Then the operator stepped into the control room and the machine began to move. The scanning apparatus looks like a big doughnut. The base, or bed. moves through the hole in the doughnut and it takes a picture of the inside of your body. I went in and out of the doughnut hole a couple of times. After that, it was back to the previous waiting room until the results were delivered.
The urologists called me in again to discuss what had been found. I had 2 small kidney stones, about 2 millimeters in diameter. One was at the top of the tube leading from my right kidney to my bladder. The other was near the bottom of the tube on the opposite side. The stones were tiny, but not so small as not be felt. What to do? The urologist was very frank. Nothing. Just wait for those little stones to flow out of my body with the normal process of urination. According to him, I probably might not even feel that it was happening. He gave me a pill that was supposed to help expand the tubes in my urinary tract and had me hooked up to a bag of saline solution that flowed into my vein by way of that Venflon. Then we sat down and waited for the bag to drip slowly until it was empty.
The hospital released me when the bag was empty. The note for our regular family physician called for a follow up ultra sound examination in 2 weeks to see if the stones were still there, or had been expelled. A follow up visit to a urologist was also called for, to interpret the ultra sound results. I also got a prescription for some more of pills like the one I had been given earlier. My wife gathered up all the papers and a nurse came by to collect the empty IV bag and remove the Venflon. Then we made our last stop of the day at the hospital. I was checked out at the admissions desk and we went home. It was about 9 PM. The whole story took a little over 18 hours.
Wetherhorn 