A tough couple of weeks...

Most of you haven't heard from me recently because I've been pretty much out of commission.  You know that I had a kidney stone procedure, but I subsequently was hospitalized with sepsis.  Last Wednesday, I really thought I was going to die.  I'm thinking one or more of the medical professionals attending me thought the same.  I had plenty of prayer support from friends and family, and the medical professionals did a wonderful job with modern technology.  So I'm still here.

Unfortunately, this seems to have come about by my injudicious application of the MIND diet.  I think I overdid it on the spinach and almonds, two of the worst things for kidney stones.  But I'd never had a kidney stone before, and I didn't anticipate this kind of problem.  So walnuts are now doing fine for my tree nuts, while asparagus, broccoli and other green, leafy vegetables can fill in for the spinach.

I was hospitalized for seven days, coming home on Tuesday.  The infection was from a very nasty, highly resistant bacteria called enterococcus.  

I continue to take antibiotic infusions at home 3X/day.  They ran what they call a PICC line from my upper arm to a vessel near my heart.  Then they have an IV arrangement like in the hospital for the medication to drip down to the line.  It drips about a drop/second, taking about 45 minutes for one dose.  This should continue at least until the 10th.

The problem is that we're not done.  They blasted the jumbo (17mm) kidney stone back in mid-December, but there were still some pretty large stone fragments.  They said that I should be able to pass anything up to 6mm, but then one fragment came out that I measured 8mm.  But it turns out that there are more.

When they did the first procedure in mid-December, they inserted a stent.  The stent provided a pathway for urine from the kidney to the bladder, while stone fragments would be able to pass around the stent.  But not many did.  So they pulled the stent out in mid-January, and we got a large flow of stone fragments.  But a CT scan showed that not all  came out, including one big one.

So they put me out again and put in a new stent.  The infections seems to have arisen from that procedure.  We are breathing a sigh of relief that this infection is over, but we remain anxious about going back in to recover the second stent.  That's currently scheduled for February 22.