Illness

Well just as my daughters health finally starts improving, my own health takes a slide. After a couple of trips to the emergency ward, a CT Scan and MRI, I have been diagnosed as having Obstructive Uropathy (an obstructed kidney or PUJ obstruction) that left unchecked can cause renal failure. It was something I was supposedly born with but did not present itself until now. I am booked in for Pyeloplasty which is the surgical reconstruction of the renal pelvis to drain and decompress the kidney,but in the interim I’ve had an ureteric stent inserted to keep the ureter open. As long as I did not press on the left kidney or drink alcohol, the pain was manageable with Endone but since I’ve had the stent inserted last Friday I have felt ten times worse. The discomfort of the stent is wearing and I have not been able to sleep which adds to the overall stress.

It is now 0200am and I know I must force myself to get some sleep before my daughter wakes up at 0500am but the discomfort level is not conducive to a good nights sleep. Has anyone had this procedure done? If so, what was the recovery period? In other words, is there actually light at the end of the tunnel? Tom Hodgkinson wrote that being ill is a legitimate reason to be idle. But when the illness stretches into months, it is frustrating as hell.

I think what adds to my depression is the fact that I am on three months long service leave which I originally took to work on my novel but is now filled with hospital appointments. I’m hoping that I will be feeling a lot better by next Monday when my daughter returns to school so I can concentrate on my writing once again. In the meantime I’ve been doing light research and scribbling scene ideas into a notebook. I can’t even drown my pain in alcohol as it makes the pain a lot worse. In fact I haven’t even had a drop of wine for a couple of months. Feeling sorry for myself? Hell yeh!