Yesterday morning Kevin finally got his kidney stent removed, all 16″ or so of it. It’s one of those procedures that could best be described as indiscreet. You’re on a table, your feet in stirrups, and they’re inserting this thingee with a micro camera and hook up through your UPB (Used Beer Port) looking for the end of this plastic tube which, once they find it, latch onto and pull out. Oh, and you’re watching the whole thing on a video screen. And then, when they pull it out, they ask you if you’d like to keep it. I don’t know if the Dr. was joking or not, but he seemed quite proud of it when he was holding it up in the air. No thanks, but why, with all the weird stuff in document with photos, didn’t I take a picture of it?

Kevin’s gradually feeling better. There’s some irritation from the removal process (any guy should be cringing thinking about this; I’m sure there some equivalent for women but it most certainly falls under the TMI catetory), but he’s already down to half his usual pain meds, and sounding a bit better each time I talk to him. What we’re praying for is that this actually fixed things; the true nightmare scenario would be to have gone through these past 6 weeks of extreme pain and find out there was no point because it was something else. We’re confident this was it. To feel otherwise would create a personal hell that even Dante could not imagine.