There are not enough words to describe the pain…
No matter. I need help. Now. If I wasn’t scared to death of Covid, I would have gone 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: Some of my deeply buried lymph nodes became so enormous that they were compressing my left ureter (the tube that connects your kidney to your bladder). Diagnosis: Hydrophrenosis. In layman’s terms, my left kidney was dying because it couldn’t drain normally. That’s what hurt so badly. That’s why I had that horrible taste in my mouth. That’s why the reflux persisted. That’s why my left leg was swollen. That’s why I was in horrific pain.
Finally, an answer to all those symptoms.
Things moved quickly from there.
We hit the pain harder with opioids and pushed to have a stent installed in 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, 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. Blood and urine squirting everywhere. The angels known as nurses were there in a matter of seconds.
Continue… My Leukemia, Part 16
