Warning Medical Explanation!

I'm going to go ahead and describe this surgery because I think it is really interesting how this was done.  If you are squeamish about hearing these things don't read on...........

I have been going to the Kansas University Hospital which is KU as in Basket Ball Champions umpteen times.  The Hospital is a teaching university hospital and is on the cutting edge of most things.  And this procedure that I had, was right up there on that edge.

Scar tissue had formed on and in one of the little tubes that comes down from my kidney and they needed to remove it.  Rather than open me back up from the front with a big incision, they used ultra sound and Xrays to put a needle into my back and into this tube.  They put a plastic tube over the needle and put it into the little kidney tube.  Then the needle is removed, leaving the tube.

Then they put a wire into the plastic tube.  Next they remove the plastic tube and leave in the wire.  Then they slip in a little bigger plastic tube and take out the wire.  I was left with this tube in overnight while they drained the kidney until the fluid coming out was clear.   That was Monday's procedure.

Then yesterday I went back into a bigger operating room where they used successively bigger wire and bigger tubing until they could insert a laparscope and remove the scar tissue.  Then like a blood vessel in a closed artery in your heart, they inserted a plastic stint inside the kidney tube. It will stay there for a couple of months, while the whole thing heals around it.

I will have no sensation that it is even in there, but it will keep the passage open, until they decide to remove it.  They will watch it with radio active dye and a camera that can see the dye.

I was told that only a few years ago the only way to take care of this problem was to go thru the complete abdominal surgery route again.   Not a pleasant thought....

So while I sit here and type this, I can feel the unpleasant feeling of where the needle and tubing were inserted in my back, but I am told it will be gone in a day or two.   All I had was a band aid over the place they went in, for last night, and the surgeon took that off today at noon and told me I was good to go........  Like in go home, which is where I am right now at 2 PM on Wednesday afternoon.....

I still had two days of staying in the hospital with them keeping me up all night, at least every hour on the hour for something like my vitals, or at 4 AM this morning, the phlebotomist was certain that I need to give her another vial of blood for them to test.   Since I knew I was going home anyway, I just pleasantly declined to let her stick me.  She wasn't a bit happy about it, but I said absolutely not!

So I was up at 4 AM for all day........

I think I will try and take a nap.......

Retired Rod