What an ordeal

I can't believe it's Friday, and that Christmas Eve is tomorrow!  This whole week feels like a dream.  A dream with extreme pain.

This was the plan for my surgery:

Remove the large stone in my ureter.
Break up the largest stone in my right kidney with lasers.
Insert a foot-long stent to help the broken up stone drain out.

This is what was actually accomplished in the procedure:

Look for the stone in the ureter that the doctor was sure was there.  It wasn't.  I'd either passed it already or "maybe it wasn't actually there."  Really?
Decide against breaking up the large stone in the kidney, so I will have to get lithotripsy (another surgical procedure done) sometime soon.  The doctor didn't even try to break it up because he "didn't realize it was so large."  They couldn't tell this from the CT's and IVP I'd recently had done?
Insert a stent.  Not sure why since nothing was accomplished to make it necessary.
Remove a small stone from the kidney to be evaluated.  This was a good thing.

After being home for a couple hours, I noticed that my bed was soaked.  Yeah, disgusting.  No one had told me I would be completely incontinent.  That was just a bundle of fun for the next couple days.

I was sent home with Vicadin, which didn't even come close to helping the pain.  I think I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but I was in the most intense pain of my life.

During the day on Wednesday, I called the doctor office no less than 10 times trying to get a stronger medication and find out why I wasn't able to control my bladder.  The nurse kept telling me the doctor was busy so they would call me back later.  By late afternoon, I was in such horrible pain I was considering going to the ER, because my doctor wasn't taking me seriously.  The nurse finally told me over the phone to pull out the stent myself (which was supposed to stay in place for at least a week before being removed in an office visit), since the doctor had probably placed it wrong, causing my pain and incontinence.  That was a fun adventure.  After going through that hell, I thought death sounded like a good option.  Ryan got the doctor on the phone and demanded a stronger medication for me, but was told that he should just take me to the ER if I wanted stronger meds.  Ryan was a bit ticked off by this point, and told them he would be at their office within a half-hour and expected them to find a solution for me that didn't involve seeing an ER doctor just because my own doctor was too incompetent to fulfill his own responsibilities.  The nurse met him in the waiting room with a prescription for Percocet - the only drug I am allergic to.  The doctor hadn't even bothered to check my chart before prescribing it.  Ryan apparently went unglued.  After using a few choice words about all the mistakes that had been made, Ryan left the office with a prescription for Oxycodone.  And I've been a happier girl ever since.

The pain is manageable now, and I've actually gotten some rest.  I've been well taken care of by awesome friends and neighbors who keep bringing over food. 

I'm determined today to get back in to the Christmas mode and enjoy the next few days.