And the hits keep coming...

... But not in a good way.

So. I'm very conscious of the fact that the political climate in the US is going to hell in a handbasket made of highly flammable materials and that many people are already suffering, or afraid that they will be next. And that the world we live in is taking a decided turn to the nasty, with fascists and racists and all sorts of other truly scary types crawling out of the woodwork, empowered by the fact that something just as nasty as they are can be elected president of the United States. I post stuff about that on Facebook a fair bit, so if you're interested about my various concerns and responses to to world out there, you are most welcome, if you happen to do FB yourself, to connect with me there. I can be found under the name Morgan Dhu.

But here I'm sort of more into talking about myself, I guess. I might get back into political rants someday, but right now, I have no energy for that.

About a month ago, I was admitted to the hospital in kidney failure. Turns out I have kidney stones the size of small mountains partially blocking both kidneys, and they had gotten very sick as a result. The kidneys, in fact, are so badly off that doing anything right now to remove them - it has to be an operation, you see, not ultrasound, because the stones are too big to break up that way - because an operation might put too much stress on my kidneys, and in my condition that could kill me. (Also, the specialist who does the operation is booked months ahead anyway, because so few people need it these days that there;s only one guy in town who's really good at doing it.)I also have gallstones, in fact, I had a very unpleasant attack while in hospital, and it seems that my gall bladder will have to come out - but they can't operate on it either because my kidneys are so screwed up that doing it might kill me. There also seems to be a small mass on one of my kidneys that they can't examine closely because all the techniques available might hurt my kidneys and, well, kill me. And there's another mass that looks like an ovarian cyst, but they can't do the investigation necessary to be sure because (you guessed it) the investigation techniques available might hurt my kidneys and kill me.

So... After three weeks in the hospital, during which tubes were inserted into my gallbladder and kidneys to drain off the bile and urine, which supposedly will give my organs a chance to rest and hopefully heal up a bit, I am at home, peeing through tubes in my back and waiting to see if my kidneys are going to get sufficiently better that all these issues can be dealt with without killing me.

There is some good news. When I went into the hospital, the definitive blood test for identifying kidney damage, creatinine level, was 370 (in the units Canadian labs use, which are not the same inits American labs use) - the normal range is under 100 - and that was apparently a very scary number. My last blood test (last week) showed that creatinine was down to 170, which is not great, but is at least a largish step in the right direction.

I am almost completely without energy - I'm even finding reading hard. I watch movies and play mindless games and hope that somewhere inside my kidneys are healing.