Samurai Tiger Flu

I've not been well this week. It started mid-afternoon on Saturday, when I first gave a little sneeze, and within 30 minutes my head was pounding, my breathing was tight and a hideous colourless liquid was pouring liberally out of my nose.
"You should go to bed," said my wife after a short while.
"I don't want to go to bed. It's boring."
"You don't understand. I want you to go to bed. In fact, I'm begging you to go to bed. You are just sitting there like a great depressing lump, with a blanket over your legs like an old woman, shouting at your children if they make a noise above a whisper, and radiating germs around the living room. Go to bed."
"Well, OK. But it's just further for you to have to walk when I need you to bring me things..."
"Just go to bed. Now!"
I go to bed. It is not as restful as I might have liked.
Within a few minutes, the Youngest arrives at my bedside, her arrival heralded by the customary crashing of the door back on its hinges. She looks at me curiously.
"Mummy says you are ill"
"Yes. Yes, that's right. I am."
"Poor Daddy..."
"Yes. Indeed. Poor Daddy. Poor, sad, tired Daddy..."

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The vanishing stone

Some weeks ago I went to see a consultant about my kidney stone, which, as long-term readers with memories for dull trivia may recall, was troubling me back in the Summer. It was not a long consultation, lasting about 200 seconds in total. A large proportion of that time was spent listening to the consultant cough violently - he was, by some margin, the sickest looking man I ever met; sick enough that when I first walked in I was convinced he was another patient and that I had accidentally wandered into the wrong room. His was clearly a smokers cough - he had the greying yellow skin of a dedicated 60-a-day man, which was faintly disturbing: with all the medical information they have access to, you kind of don't ever expect to meet a Doctor that smokes. I imagined him outside the hospital entrance each morning, defiantly sucking on three Benson & Hedges at once, giving the stinkeye to each of his colleagues as they walked past shaking their heads and tutting...
Far more disturbing, however, was his necktie: it had Bugs Bunny on it. There is a place in this world for novelty ties featuring cartoon characters, but in my opinion that place is not around the neck of a man who can decide to have you cut open. It just doesn't seem right.
Not that it came to that. During my consultation he basically hacked and choked a greeting, studied my ultrasound scan results (coating them in light sheen of phlegm as he did so) and then declared that I needed a CAT scan. In and out in less that three and half minutes because the tests I needed hadn't been done yet. I would have been angrier about this outcome, and also the four months wait to get an appointment just to hear this news, were it not for the fact that I was simply grateful that he didn't drop dead in front of me...
So: A CAT scan was required, which happened last week, and as someone with a lifelong interest in imaging I am slightly ashamed to say that my inner geek was quite excited about this. Sadly the whole experience proved to be both mundane and quite undignified: I was asked to lie on a narrow bed that had been covered in a roll of blue paper, then the nurse covered me with a sheet and asked me to loosen my belt and pull my trousers down.
"The machine will tell you what to do next.." she said, which sounded all 'sci-fi' and ominous, but disappointingly turned out be a 'Wizard of Oz' style sham as it was just her voice relayed through a speaker in front of me. The machine whirled up into life, the gurney I was on was dragged in and out of the giant metal donut a few times, and then it all stopped.
"Have you had any pain lately?" asked the nurse/CAT scan machine
"No."
"Hmmmm. We'll go again."
Giant metal donut. Whirring. In, out.
"Hmmm. OK, you can pull your trousers up".
I scrambled about under the sheet. It is surprisingly hard to pull your trousers up while lying down on a bed of wadded tissue paper. The nurse came back in.
"It's gone" she announced.
"What has?"
"Your kidney stone. Not there any more." I thought I detected a faintly accusatory tone, as if I had somehow been wasting her time with my boring sediment-free renal system. I gaped stupidly.
"Where has it gone, then?" I asked
"I can't see it at all. So it either broke up into pieces, and you passed them..."
"I don't think so..."
"...yes, that's very unlikley, as it's excruciatingly painful - or it has slipped into your bladder. That's the most likely explanation."
I was not sure how to take this. A missing kidney stone sounded like good news, on the face of it - but I didn't like the idea of anything 'slipping into my bladder'...
"What will it do in my bladder?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing. Just roll around harmlessly" she said breezily.
It must have been clear from my face that I found this concept disturbing rather than comforting.
"It's fine. Most people have them" she said. "I've seen some bladders that have been full of them, like gravel" she went on, somewhat unnecessarily.
"Sounds like good times..." I muttered, bleakly imaging my own bladder filling up with silt and then requiring some painful dredging procedure.
"Off you go. You don't need any treatment."
I stumbled off toward the door. Sadly I had managed to tuck the blue tissue paper into my trousers while pulling them up, so as I left I dragged half the whole roll off of the gurney and across the floor with me, like the worlds most downmarket bridal train. She deftly yanked it out of the back of my trousers as I passed her, while a little piece of my soul died of sheer embarrasment.
"Ha, quite a lot of people do that" she said, cheerfully.

So, there we go: the all clear. The Stone is gone, happily without the need for any kind of surgery or need to 'pass' anything. Two kidneys, no waiting. Now if only I could stop lying awake at night, imagining a lump the size of a penny rolling around in my bladder, all would be well......

The Stone...

Ah, the first week back after holiday.
It always sucks, but this week has sucked harder than usual, as a trip to the hospital had finally revealed the cause of the longstanding intermittent pain in my left side: a kidney stone about the size of a penny. It was found by ultrasound, which gave me flashbacks to when Nini was pregnant - it felt odd to be the one lying down with my belly smeared in jelly. Did you know they warm that jelly up for you? The ultrasound machine is fitted with a little jelly heater. Very civilised...
Of course, this being the era where every piece of information imaginable is available on the internet, I promptly made the classic error of Googling my diagnosed illness. Big mistake. The first site I looked at showed rows of extracted kidney stones displayed like colourful alien sweeties, and some of them were distinctly spiky. And huge! Great big, nasty jagged shiny things that wouldn't look out of place being thrown by a ninja...
I don't know what the treatment is - there are choices, depending on what the stone is made up of - but the likeliest is the one I'm least keen on: shattering it with low frequency sound, and then 'passing the pieces'. I read a sufferers account of this and he said the treatment was fine at the time - it was the week of agony afterwards that he spent "pissing blood and gravel" that was problematic.
I relayed these concerns to Nini. She wasn't that helpful:
N: "Ah, it'll be fine. It's really common. Just a few days off work."
P: "You're not listening: Blood will come out. Out of my hampton."
N: "You won't feel it. You'll be on very strong drugs"
P: "Focus, will you? You're missing the point. Blood. From my hampton."
N: "You'll be with your family."
P: "Listen, I'll say it again slowly: Blood. From. My. Hampton."
N: "I'll get you some of those muffins you like. That will take your mind off it..."
P: "Muffins? Muffins? You think that muffins will take my mind off the fountain of gore pouring out of the end of my..."
N: "Ooooh, the girls can make you a get well card! That should keep them quiet for a bit..."

Not much sympathy there from the better half - but then she has given birth to two babies that nearly weighed 9lb each, so she probably feels that she has earnt some prior authority on the whole 'severe pain/stuff coming out of your special place' front.
It'll be a few weeks before the doctors decide what they'll be doing with The Stone (my capitals), but I'm sort of hoping they just dig the thing out with forceps, or even cake tongs, or pinking shears - whatever they like, as long as it's quick...