Month: January 2003

Well, the stent — all 26 cm of it — came out: the doc offered to let me take it out myself, but I opted out. It was, um, profoundly weird, but not so much as last time: I was prone as opposed to upright, and I guess that helps. Still, bleacgh.

The last one I had was only about 6 inches, but this one went from kidney to bladder which explained the odd sensations I was feeling.

The procedure went well: the stone mostly shattered on the first go with the laser, but a chunk of it drifted up into the kidney. They fired sound waves at it and reduced it to sand.

Now I have these anesthesia byproducts to deal with: intense pressure in the lower abdomen, which seems to be slackening, thank goodness. More indescribable weirdness.

I also visited the family practice to see about these ticker issues: nothing to report there. The heart sounds good, the EKG showed no damage or other events, so I’m feeling much relief.

Next up: I get to catch all the my pee for a 24 hours in a jug so they can determine why these things keep forming. That and a 6 month X-ray and we may have seen the last of these horrid things.

Google Search: silent heart attack

I had some chest pain last night that I couldn’t attribute to anything. It lasted the better part of an hour, but it did pass, and I slept. Had a frightening dream about Beowulf or more specifically Grendel and woke up in a sweat.

After a phone call to a nurse this morning, I was remonstrated with for not immediately calling 911 and taking an aspirin. It could have been a heart attack or more precisely, ischemia.

I’ll learn more tomorrow after I have my stent removed.

Bleacgh.

Well, one aspect of getting a fulltime gig is going to be big changes in the household schedule. We lose a housekeeper, cook, and errand boy (not that I was any good at the first of those tasks) but gain the wherewithal to replace at least the first one.

I’ll be seeing less of my kids’ smiling (or bickering) faces. But since the days are drawing out now, we’ll see what fun we can have when we are together.

It looks like I’ll be running a VPN or some other secure connection to make K’s work more flexible: CPAs are rather busy at this time of year, after all. If she can work from home some of the time, it’ll make life easier.

I’ll be dropping my part-time school job, but there was someone else interested in it, so that will work out. And they can benefit from my experience in figuring out how to get paid, since no one told me any of that information.

But now that we’re used to getting by on one income, the extra cash will be good to have. The real reason for the job is benefits and lots of ’em. Universities take care of their people that way, which makes up for the less than competitive salaries (I’ve never had some repeatedly apologize for the offered salary before now).

We’ve already agreed to celebrate Christmas on our anniversary, since by then we’ll have the money: the adult gifts were very thin this year (we had a $20 budget each). We can make up for that a bit . . . . .