Marcaine has worn off; steroid hasn't kicked in...so I'm still loaded.

Enjoy these along with me.

A discussion of weight:

www.youtube.com/watch


And a lesson in love...and finances:

www.youtube.com/watch

Both are EPIC!   Thanks for sharing.
~GG

 Oh lord - what'd you do to yourself now?

I got old.

Arthritis in the scroiliac joint.  It SEEMS that when we travel in the RV, I twist and turn and sometimes move stuff that maybe I shouldn't and there you go. It never hurts when you DO something stupid...it usually starts a day or two later and you can't even remember straining.

So you go for an injection--which is simultaneously diagnostic and theraputic, in that if they give you this injection and it stops hurting...yeah, that was what it was--but it takes a few days to get better.

So I go to the day surgery center and crawl up on a flouroscopy table and they shoot in some marcaine and then some dye, to help find the space, which is forever getting smaller, between the bones.  And then they shoot in MORE marcaine and a steroid and give me juice and I go home feeling pretty good.  Looks likethis:
www.spine-health.com/video/sacroiliac-joint-steroid-injectio n-video

But then a few hours later, the marcaine wears off and the steroid hasn't even started working, so back on pain meds for another day or two.

Leaving the facility, I was thinking about how old 65 USED TO BE.  When I was born, life expectancy WAS 66.  And people were probably glad to go bcause they had to live with the pains...there WAS no marcaine, there WERE no steroids...hell, there were BARELY antibiotics outside of militaty use.

So it's all tedious, but it sure is an improvement over "the olden days."

Oh...and then stay tuned!  Thanks to malabsorption, tomorrow I start yet another fun activity...the iconic 24-hour urine collection.

I won't be quite as loaded, since by then the steriods will be working, but I'll be bored and tethered to the toilet, so I'll be just as irritating.

 I had a cortisone shot a few years ago in my wrist.  As a pianist, who at that time was playing four plus hours a day, my wrists are a mess.   I remember that waiting for the cortisone to kick in feeling well!!

Ack - I'm due to be chained to the potty over Christmas break!

Please explain the need for 24 hour urine collection.


ETA- I googled it.

It seems that SOME OF US develop kidney stones due to malabsorption.  It doesn't happen to all of us--a YMMV thing--and my uro tells me that a GOOD percentage (probaby most) of his female kidney stone patients are RnY people.  So it's the malabsorption, not the particular surgery.

Apparently, the way they decide WHY you are developing stones have is a 24-hour urine collection.  I do mine on a Sunday...you start right AFTER the first morning bladder voiding and continue collecting every drop and pouring it into a container that must be kept in the fridge--or at least on ice--the entire time.  On Monday morning, the FIRST bladder voiding goes in the bucket and then I take a shower, get dressed and drive it to the uro's office.  They do SOME testing and then they FedEX the whole mess to some other lab...in the middle of America, if I recall.  A few days later, the uro is in possession of the results.

With those results, my uro was able to explain that the malapbsorption of citrate was a major contributing factor to my stones, which--when they were removed during both lithotripsy and a later ureteroscopy procedure--proved to be the most commom, calcium oxalate stones and I started taking a citrate supplement.  Next time, we were able to see that the supplement worked fantastically in terms of improving citrate levels.  This time, we'll see if that's holding.  (Especially since the supplement I'm taking is not ideal for us because it's extended relese in a "wax matrix delivery system.")  We will go by the urine collection test results.