How it all went

As advertised, I had my lumbar puncture/spinal tap on Monday, and the kidney stone treatment on Wednesday.  All went fine.  The spinal tap was significant, because it probed what was going wrong in my brain to cause my balance problems.  The kidney stone seems to be a consequence of the way I have implemented the MIND diet -- too much spinach and almonds.  So I should rely more on kale and broccoli instead of spinach, as well as peanuts and walnuts instead of almonds.  These have less oxalate, but have similar benefits for brain health.

We arrived at the hospital in time for my appointment at 5:55 a.m.  Really early.  I was in general anesthesia when they inserted the stent in my right ureter and then hit the stone with shock waves.  When I woke up, I was back in the recovery room for a couple of hours, and then we went home.  That was a little after 11:00 a.m.  

So far I've had very little pain but a certain amount of blood in my urine.  With the stent still in, they don't want me to go back to the gym for a while.  They want to give the fragments a couple of weeks to pass, and then they'll do a CT scan to see if any are left too big to pass through the stent.  If there are, we go back for another shock wave treatment.  I may still need general anesthesia to remove the stent, but I'm not sure.

So this wasn't too terrible, at least no so far.  I always feel kind of crummy the day after general anesthesia, and today is no exception.  But I'll be fine.

I'll be seeing the urologist in early January.  He should have results of chemical analysis of the stone to determine how I should modify my diet.  But the situation looks clear to me.  I read that about 80% of kidney stones are oxalate, and that correlates with me increasing my intake of foods high in oxalate for the MIND diet.  But there are plenty of ways to implement the MIND diet without overdoing it on oxalate.