Woody and I got to our local emergency room around 4:30 this morning. Woody hadn't been able to sleep last night due to abdominal pain. We went through a long list of things that it possibly could be and could never narrow it down. Woody finally decided around 4am that he had better go on and go to the emergency room...especially in case it was appendicitis...both our grandsons have had to have emergency appendectomies due to their appendix rupturing...and Woody finally decided that he had better not take that chance.
We got there and were ushered right in, as there were no other patients in the emergency room at that time...good timing...or guess that is God's timing (and living in a small town)! I think that from the first person he talked to they decided what his problem was...everyone kept asking him if he had ever had kidney stones...and sure enough that is what it turned out to be. By the way...that had been on our list of possibilities. I had about ruled out a kidney stone as I didn't think that he was hurting badly enough...I have always heard that passing a kidney stone was comparable to having a baby and he definitely didn't act like he was hurting that badly! He did tell them when he got to the hospital that on a scale of 1 to 10 his pain was a 6...now he must have been hurting pretty badly...because usually when asked, he says either 1 or 2 even when he's told me that he is hurting badly.
The doctor felt that this medical issue has arisen due to Woody taking IL-2. He explained that usually one has to have been dehydrated (often this occurs at night--for those who haven't had IL-2 but have had kidney stones!) and also that one has to be lying still for a period of time (again, while sleeping). But in Woody's case since he had never experienced a kidney stone before and because his body had been compromised during the IL-2 the doctor figured that is the cause...Woody very likely did get dehydrated when he was so sick during the IL-2 treatments and also he was definitely more sedentary (except when he was having the shakes!) than usual...for much longer times than just while sleeping at night.
His first symptom of having a problem was on Wednesday night, but the pain only lasted an hour so he hadn't thought much more about it till last night when the pain just wouldn't go away. He would lie down and then get up and pace around, etc. The triage nurse mentioned that most of the time when someone has a kidney stone that they have trouble staying still and start pacing around. Ahhhhhh clues started to come together when she said that!
I couldn't sleep while we were trying to make a decision about whether this warranted a hospital visit...so I sewed most of the night!
The emergency room experience went like clock-work and we were home a little before 7:30am. While in the hospital, they gave him an IV to try to flush the stone out and also gave him pain medication by IV. He stopped hurting pretty quickly after the medication and they soon let him go home. He still hasn't passed the stone and has started hurting some again. He has oral pain medication, but that doesn't seem to do the miraculous pain killing that the IV med did. He did go to the library this morning and then has pretty much stayed in his recliner the rest of the afternoon and watched library DVD's and read. He really hasn't slept much...although I did find him snoozing just a few minutes ago. I didn't last as long as he did...I took a nap this afternoon...and could use another one!
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