Omaha's surgery...
Feb. 11th, 2011 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsIf you've been following Omaha's Facebook or Twitter feed for the past few days, you'll probably be aware that she's had a nasty round of kidney stones, which as one wag put it is "one of the three most painful things that can happen to the human body, and the only one of which that doesn't kill you."
It started a trip to the emergency room, but she's been on a cocktail of drugs all week: a smooth muscle relaxer, counter-inflammatory steroids, and oxycodone. (Neither Omaha nor I understand how people get hooked on oxycodone. The stuff makes you sleepy, queasy, and stupid. Who the hell wants to go through life like that?) But after all that, the stone hadn't moved in days and more were visible on the CAT scan, so her doctor recommended surgery.
We arrived at Valley Medical Center at 1:30 and went through the intake procedure.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lisakit, bless her heart, agreed to stay with us through intake and told Omaha what to expect, since she'd had stones herself once. Later, she left to make sure Kouryou-chan and Storm had an adult in the house.
Omaha was taken into a waiting room, where they undressed her, and checked her repeatedly to make sure they were doing the right procedure. Doctor Reed came in and wrote instructions on her skin over her right kidney with a marker. Other nurses triple-checked, although there was no checklist, just procedure. I'm becoming a big fan of checklists.
They put a shunt in one hand, and administered VerSed. Omaha said, "Woo! You know how hippies will reach out to touch something because they can't tell how far away it is? That's what I feel." The anaesthesiologist, a lanky man with a slow voice, gave us a list of all the things they'd be using to make sure she didn't move during procedure.
And then a big, bulky older nurse wheeled her off to ER.
I sat in the waiting room and broke my diet with a Pepsi. Dammit.
Later, Doctor Reed came out to tell me that all had gone well. They'd gotten four of the five stones, but there was one very tiny one he couldn't target accurately enough. Lots of people have stones, he said, and most don't know it because those stones don't get loose and don't cause pain. He described the focusing procedure for me:
In a water-bed like device filled with a dense liquid silione medium, there's a mobile cavitation chamber contained within a dense liquid silicone medium on top of which lies the patient, like on a water bed. The cavitation chamber is shaped like a half-ellipsiod, and at the contained focus of this ellipsoid is a powerful EMP-rammed sonic emitter. An ellipse has two foci, and any ray that intersects one focus and then reflects off the inside of the ellipse then intersects the other focus. So he positions the second focus inside the patient's body, at the stone, and presses the trigger. Boom.
They let me into her recovery room, where she looks tired. She's in a bit of pain, says the burning sensation is the worst of it, but she's got her iPad open and is reading through, so send her well-wishes through Facebook or Twitter if you feel so inclined. They're getting her more medication for the burning.
It started a trip to the emergency room, but she's been on a cocktail of drugs all week: a smooth muscle relaxer, counter-inflammatory steroids, and oxycodone. (Neither Omaha nor I understand how people get hooked on oxycodone. The stuff makes you sleepy, queasy, and stupid. Who the hell wants to go through life like that?) But after all that, the stone hadn't moved in days and more were visible on the CAT scan, so her doctor recommended surgery.
We arrived at Valley Medical Center at 1:30 and went through the intake procedure.
lisakit, bless her heart, agreed to stay with us through intake and told Omaha what to expect, since she'd had stones herself once. Later, she left to make sure Kouryou-chan and Storm had an adult in the house.Omaha was taken into a waiting room, where they undressed her, and checked her repeatedly to make sure they were doing the right procedure. Doctor Reed came in and wrote instructions on her skin over her right kidney with a marker. Other nurses triple-checked, although there was no checklist, just procedure. I'm becoming a big fan of checklists.
They put a shunt in one hand, and administered VerSed. Omaha said, "Woo! You know how hippies will reach out to touch something because they can't tell how far away it is? That's what I feel." The anaesthesiologist, a lanky man with a slow voice, gave us a list of all the things they'd be using to make sure she didn't move during procedure.
And then a big, bulky older nurse wheeled her off to ER.
I sat in the waiting room and broke my diet with a Pepsi. Dammit.
Later, Doctor Reed came out to tell me that all had gone well. They'd gotten four of the five stones, but there was one very tiny one he couldn't target accurately enough. Lots of people have stones, he said, and most don't know it because those stones don't get loose and don't cause pain. He described the focusing procedure for me:
In a water-bed like device filled with a dense liquid silione medium, there's a mobile cavitation chamber contained within a dense liquid silicone medium on top of which lies the patient, like on a water bed. The cavitation chamber is shaped like a half-ellipsiod, and at the contained focus of this ellipsoid is a powerful EMP-rammed sonic emitter. An ellipse has two foci, and any ray that intersects one focus and then reflects off the inside of the ellipse then intersects the other focus. So he positions the second focus inside the patient's body, at the stone, and presses the trigger. Boom.
They let me into her recovery room, where she looks tired. She's in a bit of pain, says the burning sensation is the worst of it, but she's got her iPad open and is reading through, so send her well-wishes through Facebook or Twitter if you feel so inclined. They're getting her more medication for the burning.
