Surgery

Joel's kidney stone surgery went off without a hitch today. That's from the urologist's point of view; Joel is not so thrilled. Joel wasn't sold on the whole idea in the first place, considering that after some initial discomfort the kidney stone did not bother him at all. That's because it hadn't gotten stuck anywhere, and according to the urologist (who was almost young enough to be Doogie Howser and I am not exaggerating all that much because according to Joel he skipped a year in elementary school and did a 6 year undergrad/med school combo program) you just can't leave a big kidney stone hanging out in there because eventually it will cause problems.

I've always been of the opinion that human beings are just not proactive creatures by nature, and Joel especially had trouble getting past the fact that he was not in any pain from the kidney stone and yet still had to have the surgery. He would have preferred, I think, to wait until the kidney stone actually caused a problem before having it taken care of. But the urologist didn't seem too keen on this idea.

Anyway, the actual surgery took 25 minutes, but we were at the hospital basically all day since we had to arrive two hours prior, and Joel spent several hours in recovery afterwards. But don't let the short length of the procedure fool you! Apparently a urologist can inflict a lot of pain in 25 minutes! We learned (probably re-learned, considering past experiences) that when a surgeon says you'll have "some pretty significant discomfort" this actually means "You will be in horrible, horrible pain."

So... that's about where we are at right now. Bright side -- for me anyway -- I got most of the way through Newsweek's special election edition magazine while at the hospital today. No real bright side for Joel on this one I'm afraid.