Today was a decent day. I launched customletters.ai, a website that lets people generate letters using artificial intelligence. After that, this mega-successful entrepreneur started applying for jobs because he’s almost run out of savings.
After that, I spent some time watching Mythbusters, writing an email, and talking with friends about various things.
I’m slowly getting back to my emotional baseline. It’s not glamorous, but it’s important to do. The key is making sure that my needs are being met. I’ve gone too long without having my emotional, physical, or mental needs met. I’ve been under way too much stress. This period of doing very little is important; it’s how I’m healing.
I do get the impression that things are going to be changing soon. I think this next period of my life is going to be pretty exciting.
The weather was nice today, so I decided to go to the Gainesville-Hawthorne trail for some exercise. I dug around in the closet for my never-used air compressor that I bought specifically for my bicycle and then failed to use.
I went to Depot Park and hopped on the trail. According to my smartwatch I cycled 9 miles. My endurance was awful, but that’s because I haven’t exercised in literally months.
The views were nice, though.
Still, it was nice to get out. There were a ton of people there. I had to constantly hold my breath going by everyone; I didn’t want to hang out in someone’s aerosol cloud. Apparently, it only takes seconds of exposure to catch Covid due to how much the virus has evolved.
I got some food from Bolay and headed home. Once there, I tried to work for a while, but my body was telling me that it was time to rest. So I continued my Voyager rewatch, played Horizon: Forbidden West, and caught up on The Last of Us before the finale aired. I went to Publix, got some snacks, came home, and watched TLOU finale. They stuck pretty close to the game, and I loved the ending.
I took my weed gummies, got ready for bed, and was suddenly struck with the urge to write this entry.
I’m starting to feel a bit lonely. It’s been nearly 6 months since Jodi and I separated, and now it’s been 6+ weeks since Tabitha died. I don’t have a ton of interaction with other living beings. Even my therapist is out of town this week. The only interaction I’m going to have with people is via video calls for work.
Tomorrow I’m going to find out if my boss, Andrew, wants to keep me on as a half-time contractor. I pitched the idea on Thursday when we talked about me staying on long-term. I have another, better-paying contract that starts at the end of the month that I’ll be working on full time for at least a few months. I don’t know what’s next after that, but I will be on the lookout for new opportunities (and upgrading my marketing skills!).
The Oscars are tonight. I hope that Everything Everywhere All At Once wins. It was pretty good.
Tabitha, the cat I’ve had since 2003, passed away yesterday. It’s obviously still fresh and doesn’t quite feel real. She’s been having health problems for a few years now, but everything accelerated starting on Friday, and on Saturday I had to make the decision to let her go.
Tabitha briefly explored the idea of being a software engineer but ultimately decided to stick with her passion of doing absolutely nothing.
A few weeks ago, Tabitha developed an ear infection. I noticed that she was having more trouble hearing me and she had started scratching at her ears, along with a bit of discharge. I took her to the vet, and they prescribed an antibiotic.
Giving her the medication was complicated. It had to go deep into her ears, and cats as a rule don’t like it when you hold them down and put medication there. I had to wrap Tabitha up in a blanket so she couldn’t move, put the medication in, and then hold her in place for several seconds. Then I’d let her go, she’d shake her head to try and get the medication out, and perhaps occasionally she’d give me a glare.
The third time I did this, I let her go and she started stumbling around like she was drunk. She stumbled into my office and just plopped on the floor because she was so dizzy. She was better after about five minutes, but this was obviously a concerning reaction. I called the vet, and they advised me to stop giving her the meds. When I asked about what to do about the infection, they essentially kind of shrugged.
I didn’t like that response, so I made an appointment with another vet for this past Friday. Tabitha had briefly gotten better while on the medication, and I didn’t want the infection to come back because she stopped treatment too soon. If the first medication caused issues, perhaps another one would work better.
She also had a few other things going on. Her stools were pretty loose, and her front paws had swollen up. Combine all of that with a ravenous appetite and it adds up to a picture of a sick kitty.
Tabitha has had some issues with her vestibular system for a while. Her sense of balance had been deteriorating for a couple of years, and while it didn’t prevent her from jumping on things, she wasn’t as sure of herself as she used to be. One way this manifested is that she started throwing up on car rides of longer than 20 minutes. In order to reduce the odds of her throwing up, I decided to withhold food around 12pm. Her appointment was at 4:30, so that would give her four hours to digest her food before getting into the car.
However, this plan didn’t really work. Tabitha is used to me giving her food on demand, and when I suddenly ignored her, it confused her. She hopped on my lap. She hopped on my computer desk. She tried being super cute, which is her go-to strategy for getting food. She also sat on the ground and just stared at me. Ultimately it worked, and I gave her more food around 1:30.
I was able to resist her other attempts at manipulation, and we left for the vet at 4pm. She did wind up throwing up on the way there, but it was a pretty small amount.
Once we got there and the vet had had a chance to conduct an initial assessment, she was concerned about Tab’s overall health and wanted to take a chest x-ray. I approved it, and the news was not good; Tabitha had heart failure. On top of that, the medication used to treat the heart failure is hard on the kidneys. Considering that Tabitha was already in stage II of kidney failure, it meant that we had reached the end of the road for what we could do for Tabitha. The options were walking a tightrope of ever-expanding medications that would lower her quality of life…or let her go.
While it was surprising, it wasn’t that unexpected. I’ve known that Tabitha has been on the downswing for a while now and that it was only a matter of time before we’d get to this point.
It was sad news, but now that I knew the time was here, I knew I could take some time to say goodbye. I’d spoil her rotten and give her as much food as she wanted. Then I’d make an appointment for someone to come to the apartment and administer the drugs that would send Tabitha on. She would be comfortable, and I’d make her final moments as good as I possibly could.
Unfortunately, that isn’t how things panned out.
The X-ray showed that Tabitha had a lot of fluid in her chest cavity from her heart failing. She had so much liquid there that it was becoming difficult for her to breathe. We had to remove the liquid so she could go home. I asked about the risks of the procedure. The vet told me that there was a risk of Tabitha suddenly crashing. The liquid caused a lot of internal pressure, and there are times where the sudden change in pressure can cause the body to fail. However, she couldn’t ethically release Tabitha to me without removing the liquid. I didn’t want Tabitha to be in pain, so I approved the procedure.
I did take a few minutes with her prior to starting the procedure. Since there was a chance she wouldn’t survive the procedure I wanted her to be able to at least see me before it happened.
I’m wearing a mask because, contrary to public opinion, COVID is still a very real threat.
They brought her into the room I was in, and we spent some time together. She was very inquisitive. She got on my lap. She hopped on a couch in the room. She crawled under things. She explored. I pet her, and she soaked up the attention.
An action photo of Tabitha exploring
It took them an hour or so to perform the procedure and then another 30 minutes to get all of Tabitha’s new medications. We wound up getting home around 10pm. I let Tabitha out of her cat carrier and she was kind of woozy from the meds they had given her. I offered her food. She sniffed it, but wasn’t really interested in eating.
Little did I know that it was a lot more serious than disinterest. At the time, I assumed it was just the drugs and that in the morning she would have her appetite back.
During the night I left my bedroom door open so Tabitha could come into the bedroom if she wanted. She stayed away, which means she was probably not feeling very great.
When I woke up in the morning, I walked into my office to find Tabitha. She’s been hiding behind a whiteboard I have on the floor, but she wasn’t there. I heard a “mrreow” coming from the closet, and Tabitha walked out to say good morning. She followed me into the kitchen and I got her breakfast ready.
I set it down and she started to sniff it. Then she went back to her water dish…but she wasn’t drinking the water. She was putting her nose in the water, but wasn’t licking any water up. She would lean against the water fountain, and the water wound up soaking into her fur. The entire front of her chest was soaked, which was very unlike her. As is the case with most cats, Tabitha really hated getting wet. For her to willingly get herself wet was concerning.
She eventually went back to her food dish, and sniffed the food again. One of her quirks is that she licks up her wet cat food instead of biting it. She wasn’t licking the food up. She’d do the same thing as she was doing with her water; she put her nose very near it and sniff, but didn’t lick the food up. It was obvious that she was trying to eat and that she was trying to drink water, but somehow wasn’t able to.
Tabitha was going in a circuit from her water fountain to the food dish and then back again. She kept trying, over and over and over and over. This was extremely concerning. A cat having no interest in food usually means that they’re about to die. I had never heard of a cat wanting to eat/drink but being unable to.
I tried several things to get her to eat and drink. I removed the water fountain and gave her a bowl to drink water out of. That didn’t help; she just dunked her whole snout in there while managing to not lick anything. She then started dipping her paws in the water, like she was trying to work out how to get the water from the bowl into her mouth. I was afraid that she would spill the water bowl, so I switched back to the water fountain. She followed me into the bathroom, so I ran the shower for a minute so she could go into the showed and lick the water up; it’s kind of gross but it’s one of her favorite things.
Well, that and drinking Christmas tree water
I even mimed licking in the hopes that she’d realize what she was doing wrong. No change. I got out a treat and tried to feed it to her by hand. She would smear the treat on her nose, but never licked it off.
This was abnormal behavior for Tabitha and extremely concerning.
The vet I had taken her to the previous night is closed on weekends. I eventually decided to go to the emergency vet to have her evaluated. I initially was going to wait and see if things resolved for Tabitha on their own, but after it became clear that she was unable to eat or drink, I realized it wasn’t something to wait on. I put her in the cat carrier and we drove over to the emergency vet.
The vet assessed her, and the news wasn’t good. She didn’t know what was wrong with Tabitha. There wasn’t anything they could do there. My options were to take her to another emergency vet with better facilities and hope that they could figure out the cause…or euthanize her.
There were no other choices.
Tabitha had already had a traumatic 24 hours. The previous night she had been poked, prodded, x-rayed, sedated, and had a lot of fluid removed from her chest. Now she was desperately hungry and thirsty but unable to eat or drink. Taking her to the other facility meant that she’d be subjected to even more tests, traumatized further, and the entire time unable to have any food or water. There was no guarantee that the tests at the other facility would even be able to figure out the issue, so there was a very real possibility that she’d have to endure all this testing for no real benefit.
I just…couldn’t do that to her.
My priority has always been Tabitha’s quality of life. Subjecting her to further testing at that point would have crossed that line. The only choice left was euthanizing her.
They asked where I wanted to have it done, and I asked if they had any rooms with windows we could open. With a breeze, I’d feel safe enough to take off my mask. Unfortunately, none of their procedure rooms have windows. They offered to do it in my car, and I countered by suggesting outside.
The emergency vet had a little outdoor area with a pond and some trees. They brought out a chair for me to sit in, and a few minutes later they brought Tabitha out. I sat in the chair with Tab and took a few pictures. I even shot some video so I could better remember her final moments. I then put my phone down so I could give Tabitha my undivided attention.
She was looking around with interest at the surroundings, and started moving around like she wanted to go for a walk. That wasn’t really an option because she had an IV in one of her arms, so I held her close and started walking around the pond. Her hearing was messed up, but I still talked to her and let her know how much she meant to me. I told her that she was a good girl and that it was time for her to move on. I told her it was okay to let go, and that I would miss her.
Typically when I pick Tabitha up, she wants no part of it. She tries to push me away and tries to hop on the ground. This time she let me hold her. She leaned against my shoulder and was staring, wide-eyed, at everything.
After a little while the veterinarian came out, and I took Tabitha over. We got settled in the chair, and the vet started administering the drugs. Tabitha looked up at me, and I pet her and reassured her that everything was okay. I stroked her as the drugs kicked in. After a minute or two, it was over. She was gone.
The vet walked inside to give me some privacy, and I started to sob. Tabitha had crossed the rainbow bridge.
A life well lived
I’m still coming to terms with the rapidity of her decline, but there’s no denying that Tabitha lived a long time and had a really good life. 20 years is the upper bound for a cat’s life expectancy, and Tabitha nearly made it. She would have been 20 years old in July.
We had a lot of adventures together. I always did my best to ensure she had what she needed to be happy. I think that overall, I succeeded.
Pets are with us for such a short amount of time compared to our own lifespans. We know when we select a pet that we’ll likely have to say goodbye a lot sooner than we’d like. There’s no good time, and while Tabitha’s ending was not what I would have preferred, it came at the end of a very long life.
The veterinarian on Friday evening told me that Tabitha was so loving and trusting that it was clear that she lived in a loving environment.
And now for some cat pictures.
Goodbye, Tabitha. I miss you.
One of Tabitha’s quirks was finding a singular piece of paper on the ground and then sitting on it.Or sleeping on it.
Because she was a cat, one of her favorite past times was taking naps, and giving it her all.
This box is an Amazon box that she claimed as her own more than a year ago. It was in Jodi’s office, and after she and I separated, I made sure to bring the box with me.Tabitha took her naps seriously.For the record, this is a second Amazon box; not the one that was in the closet!A literal queen
She was always switching up her behavior. At some point within the last year or two, she realized that if she tapped my face that she would always get my attention. She tended to do this to let me know she was hungry.
She wasn’t always demanding. Sometimes she was content just to hang out.
In the background you can see her blanket fort, where she sometimes liked to sleep.
For most people that’s not a big deal at all. Many women cook, and are good at it, and enjoy it. For Jodi, this represents a massive shift.
Let’s go back in time a bit.
It was January 2019. I had recently proposed to Jodi, and she had moved into the house I was renting in Gainesville. I started making dinner and invited her to join me as I prepped everything.
“I don’t know,” Jodi said, “I’ve had some bad experiences with cooking.”
She told me about how difficult the experience of learning to cook had been. Everything was confusing, nothing made sense, and it seemed like it took a ton of effort to get anything edible out of it. She had decided to opt out, and was fine with not knowing how to cook.
“Come on,” I said. “It can be fun.”
Skeptical look on her face, Jodi agreed, and I showed her how to chop an onion. The end result was a delicious meal, and Jodi was a little bit more comfortable in the kitchen.
Since then, we’ve continued to cook together. We’ve picked up new skills and techniques, and have developed a pretty good routine in the kitchen. We look at the recipe for whatever’s on the menu, and Jodi typically chops vegetables while I handle prepping the meat or cooking the rice.
Over time, we’ve been sure to switch off responsibilities so Jodi has exposure to how everything works. She’s now fairly comfortable in the kitchen and we make meals together on a regular basis.
Which brings us to last night.
At work, I accidentally took down a critical piece of software that our industry requires to be functional 24/7. I had spent all day working on it, and couldn’t just stop working with this service still down. So I asked Jodi to make dinner without me.
When we first got together, she hated the idea of cooking. She despised it. The very idea gave her a ton of anxiety because of bad experiences in the past. So many people would just say “No, I’m good” if it means avoiding something painful.
It takes enormous strength of character to be open to revisiting something emotionally painful. Not only did she revisit it, but she conquered it. She gained new skills. She gained confidence. And now she’s comfortable in an area that she had written off as something she’d never do.
I’m so damn proud of her. It’s this openness to giving things another shot that makes Jodi such an amazing woman, and a fantastic partner. No one knows everything and no one is perfect…but as long as we’re open to trying again, anything is possible.
My BMI is too high. 25.1 the last time I checked. I’m pre-diabetic. My triglycerides are too high. Welcome to modern American living.
In spite of trying to lose weight via various methods for the past decade, my weight is stubbornly in the same spot. I’ve had to unlearn a ton of bad habits, and I feel as though I’ve made significant progress…even though the scale doesn’t budge. Ultimately weight loss comes down to calories out being greater than calories in. I know this.
However, your body wants to stay the same weight. Anytime you get into a situation where you’re at a deficit (or an excess), your body has various mechanisms to get you back to your core weight. In my case, those mechanisms outsmart my logic every time. Overall, though, I do feel as though I’m slowly unlearning bad habits and figuring out new strategies.
One such strategy is intermittent fasting. I find it really difficult to eat a balanced diet, but it’s significantly easier just to not eat. I’ve tried the 16:8 protocol (don’t eat for 16 hours), but over time I found myself making more and more excuses to eat outside of my 8-hour window. I’ve been experimenting lately with 24-hour periods of fasting. Actually it’s more like 32 hours, but I don’t think it makes much difference.
If I can fast for one day per week and keep my food intake reasonable the rest of the week (while also exercising as much as possible) I should lose weight. Today was a fasting day, and overall it went well. I started out on the treadmill for an hour and went about my day as I normally would. Instead of normal meals, I just had (Starbucks Cold Brew) coffee. This wasn’t technically a straight fast since my coffee had cream and sugar in it, but according to my calculations I’ve had around 300 calories for the entire day.
My typical BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is 2400 calories a day. With the exercise from this morning combined with the afterburn effect, I’m at 3,500 calories with an hour to go. My deficit should be around 3,200 – 3,300 calories, which is nearly a pound of fat. If I can do this every week, I should start seeing that scale start to move.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
Work went well today. I feel as though things are starting to fall into place. Because of all the caffeine I was flitting from one thing to another, but I felt really productive. I was having trouble focusing on individual tasks, so I wrote down items in order to avoid forgetting. I followed up on most of the things I wrote down.
I scheduled three Lunch ‘N Learns (how ironic I’m now responsible for them when I avoided them like the plague at SharpSpring), merged a huge PR to production, made progress on our new deployment strategy, and generally was a productive person.
Jodi and I had a nice night when I came home. We got the rest of our week organized and spent an hour or so talking. I went to the store and got some (healthy) groceries to eat tomorrow.
Will Richardson posted on Facebook that he and Suzanne are planning to do a Tough Mudder in December. I’m going to discuss a training plan with my trainer tomorrow morning and try to focus for the next couple of months on that event. It’s somewhat intimidating, but not as much as the first time I did it back in 2017. I know I can finish the course, even if I don’t do all the obstacles.
Jodi surprised me by saying that she was interested in doing it, too. I think that the entire 10 mile course might be a little too difficult for her, but I encouraged her to sign up for the 5k version. I think it will be fun to have her there doing obstacles with us.
I’ve been trying to get around to writing journal entries for a long time, and today is the first time I’ve actually done it. I want to develop the habit of writing about my day every day, even if it’s only a few sentences. Not every entry will be public, but hopefully I will develop this habit the way I envision. I don’t want to look back in 40 years and wonder what the hell I did with my life.
Now it’s time for bed, where hopefully my excessive amounts of caffeine won’t keep me awake.
I took Tabitha to the vet the other day for her checkup. Overall she’s fine, though her thyroid is a little overactive. The vet requested a stool sample since they weren’t able to obtain one there.
These days Tabitha spends her time outside, and she goes out every chance she gets. In order to get a stool sample, I have to keep her inside until she uses the litter box.
Tabitha is extremely unhappy with this turn of events.
Last night she kept trotting to the door every 10 minutes, since that’s usually all it takes for me to notice she wants to go outside. Her attitude seemed to be that I must not notice that she wants to go out, and that it must be a simple oversight on my part.
Since she’ll dart out the door as soon as I open it, I’ve been having to lock her inside the second bedroom anytime I go outside.
She doesn’t understand why I’m doing this to her, and now she escalated from mildly confused to VERY upset. She hates having her autonomy taken away.
This morning she kept coming downstairs to hop on my lap in a last-ditch effort to be nice and remind me to let her out. When that didn’t work, she switched gears and is now ignoring me.
A half hour ago she came downstairs to sit down next to my computer desk with her back to me; she wanted me to know I was being ignored.
A few minutes after that I went into the kitchen to give her some medicine. It’s wrapped inside a cat treat, and she generally likes it. I called her into the kitchen and she ignored me. I made eye contact with her and called her again.
She looked at me and deliberately sauntered off into the bedroom. I’m officially being ignored.
For most of the week of July 4th, I was on vacation. I didn’t do much of anything, I just relaxed and took it easy. I’ve recently been dating someone new (more to come on that soon), and we were able to spend a lot of quality time together. I went to bed on Sunday night relatively early; I wanted to get up bright and early on Monday so I could roll into work and spend a little time catching up.
Things didn’t quite pan out like that.
I woke up at 2am with indigestion. I had some pain in my GI tract, and needed to use the restroom. I got up, did my business, but felt like I wasn’t finished. Then I started burping. I wasn’t really worried until after thirty minutes had gone by and the burping didn’t show any signs of letting up. And I still felt like I had to use the bathroom.
My girlfriend, Jodi, is a nurse, so one of the perks with that relationship is free medical advice. I sent her a text message explaining my predicament and asking her to give me a call if she happened to wake up and see my text.
I wracked my brain, trying to figure out what the issue was. I doubted it was food poisoning, because I wasn’t vomiting. I also hadn’t eaten anything that would easily lend itself to food poisoning.
Breakfast Doughnuts are not really known for their ability to cause food poisoning, and neither is coffee. Odds of food poisoning – really low
Lunch
My salad might have had a chance of making me sick. I used a salad in a bag and simply added chicken that I cooked separately, sous-vide style. Pre-made salads have been in the news recently for making people sick, but the main culprit has been Romaine lettuce, which wasn’t in my salad. The other culprit might have been the chicken, but I cooked it long enough to know it was done. Odds of food poisoning – low-to-medium
Dinner
The meal replacement shake arrives in powder form and is shelf stable for months. You just add water and drink it. Odds of food poisoning – low
However my symptoms were completely inconsistent with food poisoning. With food poisoning, you vomit and have diarrhea in an attempt to rid your body of some type of toxin. They were more consistent with indigestion…with my body not liking what I ate.
Over the past few months I’ve been working hard to change my eating habits. I’ve been replacing one meal a day most days with a meal replacement shake. The shake I’m using, from Ample, is filled with a lot of really healthy ingredients, while having the benefit of filling me up and only being 600 calories. I noticed after drinking Ample consistently that my tastes began to change. Soda would taste different. Random foods (typically unhealthy foods) wouldn’t be as satisfying. When I’ve been tempted to stray from my diet and actually do get something unhealthy, I would often find it unsatisfying.
This was the case with the doughnuts I had for breakfast. I knew I shouldn’t have them, but if I had two (and a coffee) I could still fit everything into my caloric goals for the day. So I bought them and didn’t feel guilty. What I did feel after eating them, though, was a bunch of queasiness. I had basically eaten a sugar bomb, and what wasn’t already sugar was easily converted to sugar. I could feel my stomach complain after I ate it, but 30 minutes later I had forgotten about it and moved on with my day.
So, at 3am on Monday morning I was grasping at straws, trying to figure out what was going on. Out of everything I had had that day, the doughnuts at breakfast seemed like they might be the thing most likely to make my body complain.
So the burping continued, on and on, for hours. Around 5am, Jodi woke up and gave me a call. We theorized about what could be happening and I told her about my doughnut theory. Since the symptoms pointed to indigestion, I decided to drive to a drugstore and buy something to get rid of the gas. Once the gas was eliminated I could go to sleep.
I drove to a drugstore, bought some pills, and drove back. The directions said to take one or two, so I took one to see what effect it would have. Forty-five minutes later the gas had only decreased slightly, so I took another pill. 30 minutes after that, my stomach had calmed down enough for me to feel okay with going back to bed.
I realized that I needed to urinate, so I went into the bathroom. I was in for a surprise. My urine was super dark.
Well, super dark for me. I snapped this picture and sent it to Jodi. She was skeptical; she said it was dark but it was within the range of normal. My urine is typically an extremely light yellow, or clear. This was out of the ordinary for me. I was concerned, but not super concerned. I know that during times of distress, the body can produce a lot of waste products and sometimes your urine can be darker than normal. It had been a while since I had urinated, maybe something had happened in the interim.
Jodi advised me to drink some water and then urinate again in a half hour. It was sensible advice, so I followed it. Thirty minutes later, my urine was even darker. While trying very hard not to freak out, I had one more bottle of water, with the intention of trying to urinate again in another 30 minutes. If it was still dark, I was going to make an appointment to visit my doctor.
Then the pain started.
Now, this entire time I had been awake, I had had some pain off and on. There was pain in my abdomen and in my back. A little Google-fu revealed that it’s common for indigestion to cause this sort of pain. This pain, however, was new. It was primarily located in my back, and it was sharp.
Whenever you report your pain to a medical professional, they ask you what your pain level is on a scale from 1 – 10, with 10 being the maximum…the worst you’ve ever felt. My pain with the burping and abdominal/back pain had been about a 3 or a 4; annoying but not much more than that. This new pain in my back was about a 5 or a 6; definitely enough to get your attention and tell you that something was wrong.
So I fought through the pain for another half hour until my doctor’s office opened. I called them and told them I was in urgent pain and needed to be seen immediately. They looked at their schedule and promptly offered me a 1:45pm appointment.
As a result, I decided to go to Urgent Care. I got dressed and hopped in my car. It was around 7:45am by then, and a ton of people were trying to get to work, so the roads were crowded.
And EVERYONE was moving SUPER SLOW.
And with every minute my pain level was increasing. What had been a 5 was rapidly increasing to a 7. About five minutes into my drive to Urgent Care, I changed my mind and decided to visit the Emergency Room.
Ten misery-filled minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the ER and rushed inside, bracing myself for the inevitable wait. To my great surprise, no one else was in there. I went to the admissions desk, they took my info, and after a moment called me back.
After a quick initial screening, I was taken back to a room. I texted Jodi to let her know what was going on and tried to get comfortable. I was still feeling pain, so I was short on patience. I felt a bit better when I paced around the room, so I paced while I answered the nurse’s initial questions.
Not too long after that, another nurse came in with a bag of saline and I wound up having to get into the bed so she could insert an IV. By this point I think they had decided that I had a kidney stone and were determined to treat me as though I had one. They told me that they wanted to give me Fentanyl.
America is currently in the midst of a huge opioid addiction epidemic, and powerful drugs like Fentanyl are leading the charge. Fentanyl is extremely powerful; it’s between 50 and 100 times more powerful than morphine. When they mentioned the Fentanyl I knew that they were taking this pretty seriously. It shocked me, to be honest. They clearly knew (or suspected) more than I did. You don’t just break out the Fentanyl for no reason.
The doctor came in a few minutes and said he thought I had a kidney stone. I was surprised; I’ve never had kidney stones. While I was growing up, my dad had a large number of them and I’ve tried to structure my diet in such a way that I am not at risk for them.
The next few hours were miserable. I had some imaging done, and gave a urine sample. Then I waited. And waited. And waited. The pain was excruciating. There were times where I was writhing on the bed in pain because I couldn’t just lay still. Another time the pain was so bad that I felt as though it was going to make me vomit.
Eventually, with the addition of some Valium I was able to fall asleep. I woke up when the doctor came back into the room and informed me that the imaging showed I had a kidney stone in my left kidney.
They discharged me, gave me several prescription meds, and sent me on my merry way with strict instructions not to drive. It was a larger stone, but it would probably pass on its own with no problem.
Over the next couple of days, it became clear that this was not correct. The ER referred me to a urologist, who wanted to see me the next day. I arrived at my appointment and immediately the doctor began trying to convince me to have surgery. He said that if I wanted to try to pass the stone, I could, but he felt like surgery was the best option.
I asked several questions and eventually decided to take the doctor’s advice and get the surgery.
The surgery is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, July 19th. I’m a little worried about the process of using anesthesia, but I’m overall a fairly healthy person and I should be fine.
There’s a 15% chance they won’t be able to perform the surgery, and I’ll have to live with a stent inside my urinary tract for two weeks before they try again. I’m really hoping that things go well.
