January 17, 2026
***STATUS REPORT: ***
Banality Lurks Below the Fold.
Here is a very silly girl with epic boots as compensation:
As I mentioned in the previous banality post, my condition carries the potential for a large stone to completely block a kidney and this can rapidly lead to renal failure. Shockingly, in a completely unexpected turn of events, it turns out that a large stone has completely blocked one of my kidneys (who saw THAT coming?)
I had a stent installed Tuesday to relieve pressure on the affected kidney and keep it from bursting/dying. I've had similar surgeries to remove stones that were too large to pass and this went FAR better. (I'm already walking ATM.)
The big surgery, to cut open my back, to open up my kidney and remove the stones that are plugging it was supposed to be scheduled by Wednesday/Thursday. . I just talked to work and they are going to be filing short term disability paperwork, and I'll be able to move one of my vacation weeks, so all is good there....or was.
I won't be retiring next month ( I was going to file last week, but delayed until I knew what was going on) because I obviously will have a lot of medical bills to pay off. I'm pretty firm about not having a bunch of debt when I start retirement. Still, I hope to retire this year. However....
As I said above the first surgery went well, way better than I'd expected in fact.
The second surgery, which was to be scheduled pending the results of the first one but was supposed to be by the end of this week has not happened yet.
There are two complicatio...Three complicatio.... AMONGST THE MANY COMPLICATIONS ARE BUT NOT LIMITED TO:
A urine culture taken during my first surgery indicates that the kidney infection is still present.
Cutting into the kidney is therefore not advisable.
The big Verizon outage Wednesday screwed everything up. I called Thursday and Friday, trying to get info on my next surgery to no avail. I played phone tag, being on hold over an hour at one point, because, as I gathered, the doctors office is scrambling to get records lost in a related cloud mishap. Friday was when I found out about the infection being back (it never left probably).
I've been on 4 antibiotics since the first of December, this kidney infection, which put me in the hospital, is currently low key and basically asymptomatic, but seems to be antibiotic resistant. Thus they needed to do further culture tests to find out what antibiotic will work and......
Weekend. The office now subcontracts out to an outside lab service and the lab is closed on weekends.
I'm currently untreated, with a painful stent (really an embedded catheter) installed. This is DESIGNED to drain my kidney expeditiously and it keeps me on a VERY short leash to the bathroom.
The delay is leading to complications at work, because my recovery is supposed to be two to three weeks from the second surgery, and they cannot even schedule the pre-op until my kidney infection (which will not get any antibiotics until at least Monday), is cleared up.
[profanities go here]
I'm not in too much pain from the procedure, but it is constant and I'm constantly having to run to the restroom, the utilization of which IS painful.....Due to this, I can't get more than 2 hrs of sleep at a stretch.
A more intense source of pain is the fact that a kidney stone on the unengaged side has chosen this week to begin its journey of discovery.
I cannot bend over because of all this. However, I had a stroke in 2021 and so fortuitously, have been able to dig out my old grabber pole, which was fortuitously, on a closet shelf and not on the floor, so I can pick up things I drop on the floor now.
I won't know ANYTHING more until Monday.
I'm not in TERRIBLE shape, and the first surgery really did go better than I expected, but I'm in a sort of limbo at the moment.
I hope the new year is being good to you all. Given that I am a captive near my PC, rather than, as expected, being in a location with no internet access, I probably should stream and something, but things will be touch and go due to lack of sleep and related issues. Still, I survived the ill-advised 7 hour Genshin stream on Wednesday, so I'll post something and making decisions regarding a schedule soon.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
09:06 PM
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