My DIagnosis - Admitting Your Kidneys Have Problems Is The First Step To Revcovery...Or So They Say

...Aaaaaaannnnnnnd we're back.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes, I had just received the news that I needed to be admitted into the hospital. I had already been sitting in the ER for quite some time now, I’d wager about four hours; remember that my phone was dead and I don’t know how to read one of those darn-fangled round things they hang on the wall. Soon there-after, something exciting happened; I got moved from a chair in the hallway, to a chair in the procedural room, which might as well have been in the hallway with the amount of foot traffic going through this room. To be honest, the room was way too-small, it was more of a closet that was turned into a patient IV center. In-fact, the cool thing about that is, I think they forgot that they stored pallets of saltine crackers in there and with my nausea I had hit the jackpot since saltines were the only thing I could really eat; keep that in mind because you never know how much you value something until you have kidney failure and everything changes. While I waited for a bed to come available on one of the floors, I sat in this room and snacked on saltines, took in 2 whole banana bags, gave 5 vials of blood, a urine test and a partridge in a pea…no wait, no partridges or pear trees. Apparently hospitals are busy places because I was here for another couple of hours, maybe you can help me out, but the little hand was near the 3 and the big hand was all the way at the top; not sure but I think it was 3 o’clock. By now, I had made the spousal phone call and informed her of my inevitable demise, or at least my admittance into the hospital; demise wasn't even playing in the back coffers of my brain yet. I also explained to her that I have no idea where I will be located when she gets off of work so there may be a slight scavenger hunt involved; she loves scavenger hunts, so she may just enjoy looking near and far for me. I had her go on one before I proposed to her but that’s really irrelevant to the story; although it may come up at a later date, but this show must go on.

Now I know, technically I’m not admitted in the hospital yet, I’m still in the ER and you were hoping to hear about my lavish room with all the quaint little amenities involved, well so was I, but I was stuck downstairs with armed guards walking around from the local prison; just as I thought the said guards were coming to take me in, I was moved again. No, not to a room upstairs but to a long hallway filled with little curtain rooms. This is where the real fun begins; during my short couple of hours in this room, I had given about another 25 vials of blood and six blood cultures; the blood cultures look like soy sauce bottles. I would venture to guess, based on some quick Google searching, that I had given about 2/3s a pint of blood for testing. For comparison, when you donate blood, you give a full pint and I don’t even think anybody wants my blood right now anyways; I have kidney problems remember, try not to forget again. Did I mention that they made me put on a dress? Yeah they did and it was cold, but I left my boxers on because I didn't want to be “that guy” walking down the hall. Don’t go telling anybody, but my wife had previously beaten some shrewdness into me since we got married; I use to change down well past my skivvies at the race track without cover prior to her.

Shortly after I had cured the shortage of blood in the local blood bank, I met with the ER Nephrologist (Kidney Doc) and he seems thoroughly perplexed as to why I was having the issues I was having. He seemed to be going through the standard initial questions and then paused a bit before asking the next one, “are you taking any ‘street drugs’?”. I gave him the answer that any responsible 27 year old father and husband should give, “nope, never have.”; he didn't seem to believe me and went on to explain that I will soon be moving to a room and that some additional tests will need to be taken. Alright, it seems fitting that if I did all the blood work, plus a urine test prior to seeing the doc, that I would have something to tease you with; well I don’t. I didn't ask for specific blood work numbers, because well, I wasn't on the ball with it yet. I did however ask him, and pretty much every nurse the even slightly peeked into my room about what they knew; no dice, the best answer I got was, “your room should be ready by now but you might have to wait a couple hours.” 

Shortly after my interrogation, I mean, consultation with the Neph., my lovely wife arrives. To my disappointment, Mason didn't come with her, he had just been dropped off with my sister in-law, Justine; she plays a good part in my entertainment value in the hospital in the future, which is pretty huge.
Okay, okay, back to the good stuff. Approximately 30-minutes later…A ROOM IS AVAILABLE!!!! If you didn't pick up on it, I was actually excited, not to be in the hospital with kidney problems, but to finally have a room and the rest of the world was already beginning to fade away and I didn't realize how far gone I would end up; neither did you, until you read that line, did you? 

On my way up I was trying to figure out what dis-configured  fully and completely deaf, bronchitis spewing, elderly roommate I was going to have, and then my transport started making small talk. This was a thorough relief, because it started with, “looks like you’re getting your own room, in the new building.” What a relief, because I was probably already going to have a hard enough time sleeping with everybody poking and prodding at me, much less dealing with a TV volume entirely too high and Captain Wheezy and Sneezy. After being dropped off by transport and getting settled into my single bed hospital suite equipped with private bath AND shower, enough room for another bed for guests; this actually happened later in my stay, I even had my own TV with 13 channels; 2 of which were Spanish, 2 were always covered in infomercials, 1 was the hospital info channel, and 1 was a live feed of the Las Vegas Courthouse; life was rough coming from 100’s of satellite channels with DVR. 

Lets scroll forward a bit; well only 30 minutes though. Dun, dun, dun…Christa’s parents arrive. I would have to say that at this moment in my kidney adventures, I began to really understand what the term “being Christ-like” actually meant; even though that previous paragraph doesn't sound like it, but that’s the point right? To give you and idea, my in-laws, Rick and Marie Jackson, live in Mesquite, Nevada, which is an hour outside of Las Vegas; they hopped in their car and drove down to come and see me in the hospital without question. Now you might think, what parents wouldn't do that? Well, technically they only adopted me into their lives, and it was probably against their wills since Christa was set on marrying me anyways; they will deny it but I know the truth. Oh, they know I’m kidding!!! At this point in the story we are all still hypothetically still in the dark about what is going on and for them to drive down merely because I was being admitted is still astonishing to me; that is one of the many reasons why they are so loved, by so many. More of their details will be revealed later, as they tend to stick around for quite some time during my little journey; this is quite significant because even they couldn't stand the hospital food. 

Now, I haven’t mentioned it because I assumed everybody reading this has had the flu and knows how it feels, and most of the time it felt like death, but I was just sick not dying…until now; apparently I was worse then sick and I was feeling it. Not to sound like I’m complaining, but I had a brand new cough that nobody could explain, my lower back was killing me, almost like my kidneys were trying to leave my body, and nausea would make me “do the Technicolor yawn” at the smell of anything thicker than air. According to the nurses on my floor that night, most kidney diseases don’t really show any symptoms until something sets it off. Well, the flu was trying to kill me and did something to really upset my kidneys, because I went from bad, to knocking at deaths door, overnight. One of the doctors that initially came in to introduce himself and do a quick exam, which always consisted of listening to my breathing and squeezing my ankles, we’ll get back to that, and was joking with Christa about putting Pine-Sol in my soup; I chuckled and then looked at my wife who had let the joke go completely over her head, which made me chuckle a little harder and boy did laughing hurt. After some more blood work, this will happen approximately every 2 hours, like clockwork, for my entire stay; I was taken downstairs to do an ultrasound of my kidneys. 

I was still in the, go-with-the-flow mode of thinking and really wasn't concerned with my condition or what may come of it; it would seem that nobody really knew what was wrong and I was just going to be flushed with more bags of sodium bi-carbonate until I was healthy again. Although, it seems that I couldn't care less about what is going on, it was actually quite the opposite, but I was able to keep my cool and handle it like a champ; all thanks to my Mom. My Mom, Susan; yes the same Susan I mentioned in my first post, has been battling breast cancer for well over five years now. She has had multiple surgeries, including a mastectomy, been through every type of chemo and radiation treatment that one of the leading cancer hospitals, City of Hope, has to offer and lost her hair on a few occasions. Nevertheless, she still walks with her head held high and a smile on her face, she has always done her best to cover her pain even though you can see its excruciating and, although obvious, she did really well at covering her weaknesses up. My Mom was always out to help everybody before getting cancer, and Stage-4 breast cancer wasn't going to stop her now. Make sure you take note, because this is really significant in my motivation to be as upbeat and forward thinking throughout my stay as I was; if she could go through everything she was going through and nary blink a I eye at it, what do I have to complain about?

Although you would normally look at that paragraph above and say that is a ton to go through, it’s not over. I saved a real doozie for you and it going to have to wait for my next post because I’m exhausted and life isn't so easy when you lose 32 lbs in the hospital after only weighing 142 when you were admitted. Don’t you get your panties, or boxers, or any sort of undergarment, if you’re wearing some, all in a bunch; I will still be doing my best to post and try to catch up to present time.