Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before...

Brent's been admitted to the hospital with a kidney stone. Yeah... he was just discharged today. And yes, we're back in the hospital. Turns out the reason that he's continued to have problems with the pain is that one of the stones was NOT pulverized by the lithotriptor as previously thought. When we came back to the ER today they did a CT scan and it showed the stone, sitting and smiling in the exact same painful spot that it was in on Monday. It didn't show up on any of the X-rays, so they didn't know what was causing his pain previously. And apparently the little bugger didn't move much between Wednesday and this afternoon because Brent felt fairly good.

I don't know if you've seen "Independence Day", but there's a scene where they think they've destroyed the alien ship and then, when the dust clears, it's still sitting there unharmed. I thought of that today when they told us the stone was still present and accounted for. "The target remains. I repeat, the target remains."

On the good side, this means Brent isn't losing his mind - he has been in kidney stone pain this entire time. He was starting to get a lot of skeptical looks from the well-meaning staff. Can't say as I blame them - it should have been pulverized.

On the other good side, at least we found out that there's still a straggling stone NOW instead of in a couple of weeks when we're in Haiti. I shutter to think of what THAT would have been like.

Which reminds me... Brent's first kidney stone came when he was serving an LDS mission in the Philippines. During a typhoon. With no electricity. They did finally get him to a hospital, but once there it took the poor doctors awhile to figure out that their "normal" dose of morphine was "Filipino-sized" and that this large 6' 4" guy MIGHT need a little more than their average patient.

So, hopefully we get this cleared up in time for the trip to Haiti to go off without a hitch.

Hopefully the urologists will have an idea on how to help him.

Hopefully he'll be able to sleep and they'll be able to keep his pain under control.

Thank you to Nate and Al (and John) as well as to our friends at both our jobs for their help and support. I know it hasn't been easy covering for us. We appreciate your help.