Success!

As much as I don't like him, Dr. Barkley was able to exchange my stent out! This was a huge relief since his last attempt had me stuck in the hospital for 5 days. This time, I was in and out in less than 5 hours! And now that it's done, I can confess how extremely nervous I really was. Those of you who know me know how superstitious I tend to be. There were so many parallels between the first procedure and this one: the doctor scheduling me first so I can get out early, an important get-together that weekend that I did not want to miss (the first time-Brennin's first birthday party, this time-Patricia and Eric's engagement party), not to mention that it was going to be on Friday the 2nd again. I had myself pretty much convinced that he wasn't going to be able to change it out and I had a plan: I was refusing the second surgery that gave me the nephrostomy tube and had me sitting around all weekend waiting for the right doctors to work their Monday-Friday hours. I was going home. I would come back on Monday and they could do whatever they needed to do, but I flat out refused to sit around the hospital all weekend! I had myself so worked up for this fight, so as I was coming out of anesthesia, the first thing I asked the nurse was, "Did it work?" She looked at me like I was a little crazy (probably because my articulation sounded more like "Di-iwor?") so I said in my slowest, clearest post-anesthesia voice, "Is the stent in?" She said, "Oh, yeah! He changed it out in less than 10 minutes." And then I fell back asleep. Some fighter I turned out to be!

So after finishing my post-op and getting released, I come home to drink 2 huge bottles of banana flavored barium sulfate. At first, it's like drinking a banana Slurpee that's separated (trust me, I know my banana Slurpees!) After the second glass, though, it's like drinking wet chalk that someone tried to flavor. Each bottle gave me 3 glasses, so you can probably guess what it was like by the end. Anyway, it could've been flavored like (insert the grossest thing you can think of here) and I still would've chugged it because it was the contrast for my CT scan! The scan went pretty smoothly and I am anxiously waiting for Thursday when I get my results! I have a good feeling about it, though, because of the success of the stent exchange. Now to just wait and try to be patient...