What’s up with the kidney stones?

Absolutely no change what so ever.  They’re still all big and floaty in there.

I thought the stones looked smaller on the CT scanner screen but I now know that I was just delusional.

The Urologist confirmed that the antibiotics were ineffective.  I guess that’s not a big surprise.  My online research said that only a small percentage of this type stone is reversible with antibiotics.

Satomi is scheduled for an outpatient Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL) session to destroy the stones.  Here’s a site with more information about the shock wave therapy:  http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/444554-overview.

There are big stones in both her kidneys so two seperate sessions will be necessary.  There needs to be a month between sessions to let her body heal from the shock waves and time enough to pass the crumbled chunks out.

So here’s the tricky part: 

Oral Chemo drugs will be continuing again in the next couple of weeks.  She hasn’t taken the oral Chemo since October/November of 2009.  At the time she was taking large doses of Decadron and benefitting from its anti-inflammatory properties so the Chemo had minimal side effects.  Now that she has weaned off the Decadron, the Chemo side effects may be more serious. 

Ideally the Chemo drugs should wait until after the ESWL sessions but that’s just a really long time to wait.

4/1/2010 Update:  ER Visit

Sat’s 5mm stone finally started to pass. Her pain was an 8 or 9 out of 10 so I rushed her to the ER.

We’ve been here since 1:45pm. She got painkillers, anti-nausea meds and a big bag of IV fluids. She just had a CT scan and is resting.

It’s now 5:00pm and we just got discharged with several drugs to help pass the stone.  The CT scan showed that the 5mm stone was closely followed by 2 other smaller stones. 

As ER visits go, this was a relatively easy one.

4/2/2010 Update:

The ESWL has been moved up to next Friday 4/9/10.  She hasn’t passed anything yet but has started the drugs and lots of water.