For Jason

Jason has had some really exciting things happen lately and I think he was feeling a little left out of the blog world. So here are all the details, because he really likes the details. It's really lengthy, and I apologize. If you don't want to know about Jason's urine and it's contents you might not enjoy this.

It all started at the end of October, one cold and dismal Tuesday morning. Actually, he hadn't gone to bed yet; he was studying. I was in bed and at 1am he came to tell me that there was a disturbing amount of blood in his urine and the on-call nurse had told him to go to the emergency room and that someone else should drive him. I really did not want to get the kids out of bed at this hour, but also knew it was important for Jason to get to the hospital. Luckily Jason has friends that aren't married and one of his buddies that lives nearby had just gotten home from the library and was willing to drive him. After a long night, they told him the blood was not a good thing but there was nothing else wrong with him so they didn't know (this is one of the main reasons I hate doctors, but I won't get into that). So they told him to go to the family clinic in a few days just to check things. But lucky us, we know a lot of medical residents one of which is in Urology. Jason gave him a call and he was able to get him an appointment for the next week at the Urology Dept. Meanwhile Jason has no other symptoms, but still some blood. Weird.

1 week before his scheduled appointment, he had two tests on the same day and left for school rather early. On that same day both kids miraculously slept in until almost 8 and when I finally got to my phone to turn it off vibrate from the night before, I had already missed 3 calls and had 2 texts. All from Jason. He was having a kidney stone attack and was back at the ER. I was relieved for a moment only because we now knew what this was all about. We'd dealt with this before. Oh, yes, this in fact was #7 for Jason (and it turns out #8 as well). There was a rather large stone in the process of being passed and one still in his kidney that was 7mm! Two weeks later he has yet to pass either and is prepared with plenty of pain meds. After going to his scheduled appointment the next week they decided that he would need surgery to get the one out of his kidney, but it's scheduled for January. Why so long? Because 1. Jason doesn't have time till then and 2. they are hoping that he will pass it on his own by then and not need the surgery.

Despite all this, Jason is doing well in all his classes despite having found a new nemesis in one of his teachers.

And for all of you that need a visual, here are the culprits. It doesn't look that big, but you can ask anyone who has had one, it doesn't take much.