18-04-19, 01:57 PM
Cheers Anquetil,
Ach, just some long term digestive and kidney stone issues. Hopefully neither will become too serious – touch wood. Oh yeah and a bad start to the year with shingles and ma bleedin knee playing up. Ah the joys of getting old. Sounds terrible but really health wise I’m OK.
I remember well the first time I became aware of kidney stone issues. Probably coming on 20 years ago. I had a bit of what I thought was mild back pain for a few days. The pain got worse, then on one visit to the toilet I passed dark red urine and I then threw up. A few hours later I was calling the NHS line – they told me to take a couple of paracetamols and lie down! I couldn’t sit still never mind lie down. In fact, I had to phone for me mammy and get her to call the NHS line again as I could not sit still enough to use the phone. They dispatched the local GP who gave me a shot of morphine and told me to go to the hospital. My mammy then drove me to A&E where I was given more morphine and I spent the night there and most of the following day. And oh, I love morphine. The old kidney x-rays were fun. They put a bar across to block your ureters, then they produced a half pint sized syringe full of iodine and pumped it into you. X-ray technology has improve a shit load in the last couple of decades.
I think lots of people live their whole life with multiple small stones without ever realising they have them. I’ve just got one right now that wants out.
Lithotripsy machine just fires targeted sound pulses to smash the stone. The remains of the stone will hopefully now just pass out in my pee.
The machine I was on yesterday was clearly a lot more sophisticated than the one I was on about 15 years ago. The big difference seems to be the new one uses some new-fangled live x-ray head to target the stone. The old machine used ultrasound to find the stone. I’m wondering if my consultant (not the consultant that I saw yesterday) doesn’t quite fully appreciate what the latest machines can see. He was keen to put me under and go in with the laser camera, which though a routine procedure, is clearly higher risk and surely much much more expensive.
A quick search for videos and photos of Lithotripsy and I note some health services sedate people for lithotripsy. It is quite painful.
Gary told me some folks take 100 shocks, get up and walk out the door. Some can’t take full power shocks. I took 300 or 400 at full power and Gary decided to back off 10% as I was struggling a bit. And he gets little old ladies who lie down, hardly say a word and take the whole 3000 shocks in one run with the vast majority of them at full power.
Ach, just some long term digestive and kidney stone issues. Hopefully neither will become too serious – touch wood. Oh yeah and a bad start to the year with shingles and ma bleedin knee playing up. Ah the joys of getting old. Sounds terrible but really health wise I’m OK.
I remember well the first time I became aware of kidney stone issues. Probably coming on 20 years ago. I had a bit of what I thought was mild back pain for a few days. The pain got worse, then on one visit to the toilet I passed dark red urine and I then threw up. A few hours later I was calling the NHS line – they told me to take a couple of paracetamols and lie down! I couldn’t sit still never mind lie down. In fact, I had to phone for me mammy and get her to call the NHS line again as I could not sit still enough to use the phone. They dispatched the local GP who gave me a shot of morphine and told me to go to the hospital. My mammy then drove me to A&E where I was given more morphine and I spent the night there and most of the following day. And oh, I love morphine. The old kidney x-rays were fun. They put a bar across to block your ureters, then they produced a half pint sized syringe full of iodine and pumped it into you. X-ray technology has improve a shit load in the last couple of decades.
I think lots of people live their whole life with multiple small stones without ever realising they have them. I’ve just got one right now that wants out.
Lithotripsy machine just fires targeted sound pulses to smash the stone. The remains of the stone will hopefully now just pass out in my pee.
The machine I was on yesterday was clearly a lot more sophisticated than the one I was on about 15 years ago. The big difference seems to be the new one uses some new-fangled live x-ray head to target the stone. The old machine used ultrasound to find the stone. I’m wondering if my consultant (not the consultant that I saw yesterday) doesn’t quite fully appreciate what the latest machines can see. He was keen to put me under and go in with the laser camera, which though a routine procedure, is clearly higher risk and surely much much more expensive.
A quick search for videos and photos of Lithotripsy and I note some health services sedate people for lithotripsy. It is quite painful.
Gary told me some folks take 100 shocks, get up and walk out the door. Some can’t take full power shocks. I took 300 or 400 at full power and Gary decided to back off 10% as I was struggling a bit. And he gets little old ladies who lie down, hardly say a word and take the whole 3000 shocks in one run with the vast majority of them at full power.