Bill Roper's Journal

After yesterday's stone fall, I am feeling *much* better today. This is good.

It also means that I have no excuses for not finishing up the mountain of things that should have gotten done in the last two weeks but didn't because I've been under the weather. First up: finishing the taxes.

I decided to take today easy and see if I can encourage things to improve. We'll see how this strategy worked tomorrow.

Today, the pain from my kidney stone went away (happily!), but my lower digestive tract decided that it wanted to get in on the fun. And I think I am *still* trying to pass some more small stones. The net result was that I got less done than I had hoped to today. The bills are paid, but the taxes still aren't finished. But I don't have that much to do, so I should be able to finish them up in the next couple of days.

Except...

The wired network connection to the office has gone down. Now the work computer (on which I am typing) has Wi-fi, so I have fired up the Wi-fi, gotten on the VPN, and will actually be able to work for work tomorrow.

The old desktop computer (which I still have not finished moving off of) does *not* have Wi-fi. The new one does, but this isn't much help at this very moment, although it's giving me a strong incentive to finish moving everything over.

In the meantime, I have ordered a new Wi-fi dongle for the old computer. It should arrive tomorrow.

And then maybe I will be able to get some work done while I figure out what has to be done to fix the wired connection.

(The wired connection looked ok in the basement when I investigated there. The network socket on the upstairs end has been under a lot of strain for some years. I got K to get down and unwire the socket from the wall. I eventually managed to get the socket out of the plate (where it had been misinstalled in a way that was creating the strain), but I think I killed the socket in the process, so that is going to have to be rewired to see if it was the source of the problem.

I *think* there is a spare socket in the basement. However, there is no time to do the wiring now, so...)

All things must pass.

In this case, it was the large remnant of the kidney stone that got beaten up by lithotripsy on Monday. This particular bit was hard, elongated, and the length compares favorably with the .8 cm that was quoted as the size of the original stone. I was able to retrieve it, so I'll be able to take it in to the urologist at my follow up appointment.

We'll see if anything else shows up, but with any luck the problem is now taken care of.

Yesterday, I felt pretty good after the lithotripsy.

Today, everything hurts. Sleep will be good and we'll see how everything feels tomorrow. :)

Today was the matinee performance that was the finale for "The Little Mermaid" over at Maine West. The sound problems were at a minimum today and the cast did a fine job of wrapping it up.

I got a chance to chat with the director after the show and he was very pleased with the job that K had done as a student director, which was great to hear.

Everyone is now fed. This is good, because tomorrow I will not be eating for a while as this is the scheduled day of my lithotripsy. I am not exactly looking forward to this, but I am hoping that we can get the rest of the stone in this kidney.

Fingers crossed!

I got a fasting blood draw for my upcoming doctor's appointment next Tuesday done today so that we'll have numbers to discuss, which is progress. And I've got an appointment made to get the stent out following my lithotripsy, assuming that the X-ray is good, so that's progress too.

The stent remains unpleasant, but it is there to help make sure that all of the remnants of the stone leave the kidney and -- if it does the job! -- I can certainly put up with this for two more weeks.

In any case, it beats an active kidney stone.

I am back at work today, although there was a point in the afternoon where I was seriously flagging and considering a nap. The nap didn't happen, as I managed to recruit two of my co-workers for a Zoom session where I fixed some of our cookie handling that had recently broken when the cookie format was changed.

Earlier in the day, I stubbornly dug through a client file using only the tools that are available to regular users to demonstrate that the fault was not in the code, but in how they had designed the model that they were running.

Tomorrow, I may write some more code! :)

Or take a nap. It's sort of a coin flip.

Ouch.

I am home after lithotripsy today and I feel considerably worse than I did after my colonoscopy, which should not be a surprise, because we did not batter my colon with shockwaves as we did my kidney. My throat is still sore from the anesthesia, although improving, and there is a lot of kidney and urinary-tract-related soreness which I am hoping will improve tomorrow.

Things hurt enough that I sent Gretchen to Walgreens to pick up my prescription pain pills, which I almost never do. I have taken one this evening. We'll see what I feel like doing tomorrow.

But Gretchen was told by my urologist that everything went quite well, so that's encouraging. I was still out like a light when he left. :) I expect I'll see a writeup in my online account tomorrow, which *does* appear to be an improvement, because if I'd gotten that sort of report two years ago after the last kidney stone flareup, I likely would have gotten lithotripsy back then when this stone was around half the size that it was earlier today.

Now, it is supposed to be a large variety of little tiny bits o'grit that should move easily out of the system. We hope.

I'm also curious about the composition of the Uberstone, which will likely be in tomorrow's report once everything is back from the lab. This beastie was about 2/3 of an inch in size, which is way larger than you want to have to deal with.

Dealt with it is, though, and things should start improving.

Tomorrow. :)