Lithotripsy surgery tomorrow - Postings will be delayed!

Well, I'm off to the hospital again (2nd time this year) to bust up some more kidney stones.

For those who don't know, I have a rare kidney disease called Medullary Sponge Kidney (MSK). I was born with this disease but it was not diagnosed until I was in my early 40's.

Aside from the normal day to day low level pain from MSK itself, the disease has one very inconvenient side effect; kidney stones.

I pass these stones on an average of at least one month. Sometimes as many as 2-3 a month. Most all the stones pass with mid to high level degrees of pain.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that not all stones pass.

Some stones end up staying right where they're made and continue to grow and grow and grow until they become too big to pass.

This is where a nice little procedure called lithotripsy becomes part of your regular vocabulary.

Lithotripsy basically bombards the stone until it shatters and hopefully you get to pee little fragments of the previously huge stone. It doesn't always work out that way......sometimes the fragments are still quite large and produce enormous amounts of pain until it reaches its final destination into the porcelain containment unit (toilet).

The last treatment I had back in February, unlike the one I had 5 years ago, went extremely well with not too much pain. I am praying for as little pain as possible and for the urologist to do another great job in busting up the mother stone like he did 6 months ago.

So, that being said, I'll try to get back to regular postings by Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Cheers!