Removing the Urinary Stint: 2nd procedure at Good Samaritan

SO, this morning, after a little adventure with our dog Mamas who decided to scamper out the door as we were getting ready to leave, we took off for the hospital and found relatively light traffic, arriving at the hospital just a couple of minutes after our slotted 1030 schedule time.

The process of getting registered was pretty painless aside from a little flare up between the wife and son. I had blood drawn, an EKG and an X-Ray (regardless of the one that I took with me from the doctor's visit just 48 hrs. before).

I was eventually called and taken to an area where I was sent to do yet another exam, something called a "KUV", which is a scan of my kidney of some kind.  Once that was done the family and I were taken to the 3rd floor where we were given a bed in a curtained off area and I changed into the hospital garb and lied in the bed to wait to be wheeled away.

Amazingly enough, YET ANOTHER technician came by my bed to do yet ANOTHER X-Ray, this time it was for an X-Ray of my chest.  It took just a moment and a few moments after that I was wheeled away to have the procedure done.

I was attended to by a very nice Anesthesia doctor who explained everything to me and made me feel much more comfortable than the other doctor who was my anesthesiologist on 3/13 during the procedure to pulverize the Kidney Stone.

Once I was in the operating room, the Anesthesiologist gave me some pure oxygen and then a few moments later he stated to me that he would be giving me some medicine to actually put me to sleep. 

Boy, did it ever.  When I opened my eyes again, I was being rolled down a hallway and it was all over.  I was taken to recovery and I just stayed there for a while and rested and recovered.  Eventually a middle eastern nurse came to my bed and started trying to get my urinary catheter removed.

The Catheter Removal Nightmare
What took place over the next 90 to 120 minutes was a painful nightmare almost too terrible to recount.  The middle eastern nurse in the recovery room, along with the help of another male nurse, were unable to remove the catheter.

Back in the area where my family was waiting for me, a total of five nurses (FIVE!) spent well over an hour prodding, pulling, yanking, twisting and shoving, trying desperately to get the catheter removed.  At one point , a call to my doctor was placed and he basically told them that "it has to come out, so pull it out..."

They asked me to turn over on my right side and when I did that, something loosened because not too long after that the hellish episode ended and the blasted catheter came out.

So much time had gone by that I was 100% recovered from the Anesthesia.  I got dressed, gathered up my stuff and had them wheel me out in a wheelchair down to the lobby to wait for my son to bring the car around.  As soon as the car got there, I practically lept out of the wheelchair and jumped into the car, feeling absolutely a-w-e-s-o-m-e for the first time in the last month.

The Kidney Stone nightmare starts to recede into a bad memory, thank God.