Almost back -

As some of you may know, I had my Nephro-lithotripsy surgery this past Tuesday morning.

The surgery went perfect. The urologist was successful in removing a 2cm+ sized stone from my right kidney. The initial prep work to insert wires and tubes into the kidney was interesting (they put me in a semi-conscience state) and the surgery team kind of talks you through it.

The second part of the surgery is the actual stone break up and removal. Thank goodness they put me under full anesthesia for that part of the surgery.

After recovery they put me in my overnight hospital room with the goal of going home Wednesday at lunch.

That was a good goal but my post-op didn't go so well.

After getting good and awake I realized rather quickly that the pain from this kind of surgery was a lot more intense than I had originally anticipated. In fact, the pain was so bad the nursing staff got tired of coming in hour after hour to give me the morphine they just went ahead and gave me control of the terrible drug with my very own morphine button.

Just push for almost instant relief.

Sometime Wednesday morning a nurse came in to help me get up and start walking. I already knew this was a bad idea because just a couple hours before I had reached over the bed to try and grab my water cup and went into a body lockdown from the pain. The nurse said I needed to walk around and I foolishly agreed.

She helped me sit up and then to try to stand. I have never, never experienced pain on that level before. The nursing staff could not figure out why I was in so much pain. In fact, there was a gentleman across the hall who had the same surgery as I did on the same day and he was going home already!

Evidently, according to my urologist, the tube placement was the culprit for all the excessive pain. The surgeon, in order to get to the stone in the upper portion of the kidney, had went through the lower rib cage to get there. So every time I moved, that tube (now acting as a 1/4" drainage tube) was digging into all those pesky nerves in the rib cage and that was what was sending my whole upper torso into this crazy painful toxic shock lockdown.

I ended up spending another night in the hospital.

New Year's Eve morning the urologist came into remove the draining tube around 6:30am. It was almost like instant relief. That knife stabbing pain was gone and I was very happy to feel extremely sore.

I finally got checked out around 11:00am and almost made it out of the hospital without incident. Before I could get into the car after they wheeled me down from my room I started getting sweaty and hot. No....please don't get nauseated I was saying to myself. I couldn't imaging having to try to throw-up after having a giant stone removed. But the feeling would not go away and I told the gentleman driving my wheel chair to take me to the nearest bathroom.

I ended up having the dry heaves in the men's bathroom with my wife trying to help me along. After 10 minutes or so on the bathroom floor I told my wife to just get me home. I held my throw up bowl to my face all the home with one hand while holding the handle above the car door with the other and doing my best to not feel every bump along the 45 minute journey.

Most of the rest of New Year's Eve was spent in the bed.

Today is a lot better. I'm sitting here in "Dad's" chair in the living room as Ohio State and Oregon and gearing up to play in the Rose Bowl. Three of my best friends just left a few minutes ago after spending the afternoon with me. Love those guy's!

I'm up and walking around now and getting back and forth to the restroom very well...If things keep progressing this well I should be able to go to church with no problems on Sunday. I do not want to miss church!

Thanks to all those who have prayed for me; God bless you!

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!!