Evansville Metro News

Let me be upfront, I have NEVER been in a hospital, in a serious way personally. I’ve spent the night in a hospital beyond when my sons were born or the 3 sleep studies I’ve had; let me put this another way: I have never been admitted to the hospital where I personally was sick or injured.

That is until Monday March 17th 2008.

The ER Visit

It all started on Monday March 10th my family and I had just finished dinner. We had Chinese take out and I was pleasantly full and relaxing on our love-seat. I was watching my two sons playing in the floor with their Hot Wheels when I suddenly had what felt was a balloon swelling up in my lower abdomen on the right side; the pressure started to increase and I felt uncomfortable. “Just gas,” I thought, so I went to the restroom. While in the restroom, the pressure increased and it actually started to become painful. I went back into the living room and told my wife that I had some pain.

Time passed and the pain increased, to the point that it became that “mind numbing” pain. My wife grabbed the kids and drove me to Henderson Methodist hospital’s ER. At this time I was vomiting and in uncontrolled pain. The ER actually made me go through registration before going to a room. In that ER room came some of my firsts:

• my 1st IV
• my 1st hospital gown
• my 1st pain shot
• my 1st CT scan

My buddy Mitch was actually my nurse and he took pretty good care of me. Even though I was in pain, I wasn’t really afraid until Mitch was pressing on my stomach. Now mind you, my pain was on my right side, so when he pressed on my left side and it hurt on my right side, he looked VERY worried. That made me worried!

We went into the CT scan. At this point I had 3 pain shots because the 1st two didn’t TOUCH the pain I was going through. The 3rd pain shot finally got me level headed and no pain. The CT came back, I had a 6 mm kidney stone! Great…

The Urologist

The ER prescribed me some Lortabs and referred me to the local Henderson urologist, the only one in town. There used to be two urologists, and I had been to the other one but he retired last year. So let me pain the timeline that following Tuesday:

• 8am - called to setup an appointment with Urologist. His office doesn’t open until 9am.
• 9:05am - called to setup an appointment. His office has to request my records from the ER, doctor has to exam my CT results, then the office will call back to actually setup the appointment.
• 11:30 - had heard nothing, so called the urologist again. They have not received the records yet.
• 2:15pm - still had heard nothing, so called the urologist back. They had my records, but the urologist and his nurses were out of town for the ENTIRE WEEK. They would call back after they look at my records.

By this time, I was very upset; I had called off work because of this. It really wasn’t a choice since I couldn’t drive while under the Lortabs and I couldn’t function with that much pain. So my wife, who used to be a CNA (certified nursing assistant), called the urologist back to see what she could do. The urologist was out, but they had his backup doctor out of Owensboro looking at my CT scan results. They would either call us back to setup an appointment if it looked serious or they would wait until the next week when the urologist came back into office.

One hour later, the urologist’s office called to setup an appointment for me on Monday March 17 at 12:30! After consulting with my wife and parents, I decided that was entirely too long to wait and called the ER back for another referral. The ER suggested that I contact an office of urologists in Evansville, that they used to work with one of those doctors in the past but he no longer came to Henderson.

I called the Evansville urologists and was able to get a cancellation appointment on Thursday March 13th; I took it like a lifeline and decided that I would attempt to return to work Wednesday March 12th. All day Tuesday I had controlled my pain through Lortabs; I figured that I would take one before bed then go to work and take another after I arrived at work. I would schedule the medication so that I would be nearing the end of my medication time when I would be driving home, so I hopefully wouldn’t be under the effects of the medicine while driving.

It didn’t work out that way…

The Kidney Stone Strikes Back!

I had told my wife that I intended to return to work Wednesday. She did not care for that plan at ALL! She was worried that I would get in trouble for driving with Lortabs in my system or I would have a pain attack and would be stranded on the road. Her arguments made sense, so I called into work and canceled until Thursday.

I awoke Wednesday morning to zero pain. I hadn’t taken a Lortab all night. After getting up and moving around, I felt a slight sense of pressure on my right side, but if that’s all I had, I could handle it with no meds.

At 9:45 the pain struck without warning! I quickly popped a Lortab. Hours passed but the Lortab seemed to have limited effect. As the pain started to increase after 3 hours of limited pain, I couldn’t take another Lortab yet, so I informed my wife we had to return to the ER. This time, my experience in the Henderson Methodist ER wasn’t a good one. I waited 10 minutes in the exam room in uncontrolled pain. I finally pulled the help cord and the nurse sauntered in. She didn’t seem to appreciate how much pain I was in; after some time, she got me a pain shot and the pain started to get back under control. This time I was taken to have an X-ray; the doctor said that the stone hadn’t moved. It was his opinion that I would have to get surgery. I told him about my horrible experiences in getting the local urologist into the picture and that I was going to Evansville the next day to see a doctor there; the ER doctor personally knew the urologist in Evansville and said I would be fine.

I called off for another day of work and strictly controlled my pain as best I could the rest of the evening.

End Part 1. Check back tomorrow for my experiences at the urologist’s office and my 1st surgery.

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Categories: Features
Tags: ER, Henderson, Henderson Methodist Hospital, Kidney Stone, Lortab, Urologist