The doctor turns patient adventure
Okay so last time I wrote I was prepping for my next exam.
Said exam has now passed. As did I.
Along with one of the nine kidney stones that decided to declare themselves two weeks out.
It was a delightfully calm few weeks of my life. I found myself making the decision to have an operation based on the number of days I had left to study. It was basically a case of I don’t have time to wait for this stone to bore its way out of my ureter and so I’m going in there after it (and its friends).
I was lucky enough to come out of it with a ureteric stent: a tube that goes from your kidney to your bladder. This delightful stent was to be my companion for the next two weeks. Not only would we sit the exam together, but we would also spend sleepless nights arguing with one another about when I needed to go to the toilet. That’s right, two weeks of feeling like I was about to wet my pants. My strategy in the end was to ignore it and hope like hell I was making the right call. Lying on the couch at home this was a risk I was willing to take. Sitting the primary viva, running around from station to station trying to impress the pants off my examiners, not so much.
Given the less than ideal run-up, I must admit I’m fairly chuffed with having passed that exam. It’s basically four stations, where a bell rings, you open a door, rush to sit down, and then an examiner sitting across the table starts firing questions at you and you’ve got ten minutes to answer them as comprehensively as you possibly can. Any takers on my first station?
Correct. Kidney stones. Like the whole, entire, station.
When I tell people about this, they are quick to rejoice, happily declaring that at least my two weeks of pain/bloody urine/full bladder/minimal sleep/constipation/general-frustration-with-the-world-whilst-still-trying-to-study were not for nothing. I don’t think I’ve managed to feel the same sense of relief however. Could I not have just read about renal colic? Like every other pathology I read about before this exam? I just don’t feel this was the time to become a method actor. I would have been more than content with my standard approach of reading a textbook.
I have since been told by many a strong woman that the pain of renal colic (fancy medical name for pain caused by something stuck in a tube) is akin to that of childbirth. There is not one part of me that actually believes this, but seeing as I’m in a right mood of late I’ve decided to graciously accept this noble comparison, and stand proud in the knowledge that I have the pain tolerance of a piece of granite.
That’s right. All hail Eva: the birther of kidney stones.
On that though, can I just point out that there is no baby at the end of my labour. No pride and joy. Just a pebble of calcium. Or oxalate. Or urate. I haven’t had the metabolic screen yet so who knows the actual constituents, but my point is, I am left with a pebble of organic matter. Imagine the insta updates.
Photo: 4mm stone in yellow lid specimen jar.
Caption: How has it already been three months of you in the world?! Love heart emoji x 3.
My three general anaesthetics over the last seven weeks have given me a whole lot of insight into what it means to be a patient. Which is not a bad thing for us doctors to be reminded of from time to time.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely lucky. As far as disease processes go renal colic is very minor. That said though, it’s been tough! We really do take our health for granted. I concede that sounds utterly ridiculous amidst a global pandemic, but I think it’s one of those things that humans just don’t do well – we fail to appreciate stuff until it’s taken away from us, if only temporarily.
In the medical world, this is a concept we naturally have a little more cognisance around than most: it’s an inevitable consequence of dealing with death, especially premature death, on a regular basis. Seeing young people dead, relatives in disbelief, bystanders in shock, on those days, you go home and you hug (slash zoom… 1.5 meters apart please) your loved ones. You stop. You count your blessings.
The thing is though, we are human. And so it’s never really long before our resolutions to slow down and be thankful for the now, vanish. And suddenly we’re back to running ourselves into the ground, working around the clock, overeating, under sleeping, all the while updating our social media feeds to show the world how utterly perfect our lives are. As though this is an accurate representation of life. (On that note here’s a link to my accurate representation of life. I’m grateful for any assistance your clicks may provide in my quest to attain a blue tick).
The last three months have really shown me the importance of slowing down. Of doing things that actually fill our cups. That’s always been adventure for me. And thankfully I managed to sneak one in right before lockdown! Stay tuned for the next adventure: snowshoeing through Jindabyne! In the meantime, here’s a snapshot of my last cup filler!
