Dom Davis (The Blog)

However many years ago it was I last saw my urologist he told me I had a small kidney stone on the right hand side. It wasn’t doing much so he suggested we leave it and see what happened. There are two ways this stone can leave my body: naturally and artificially. Passing a stone smarts a little and it’s the kind of thing you notice. I’ve not passed the stone. lithotripsy, ureteroscopy and other artificial methods of getting rid of stones are also not the kind of thing that would go unnoticed so I think we can safely say I still have a stone.

These days I no longer have the fancy health insurance with the Harley Street urologists and am dependent on the NHS who, while great at scooping you up off the floor and getting you going again, can be a bit slow for non urgent things. If we remember I rocked up to A&E on valentines day complaining of a kidney stone. They x-rayed me, gave me some nice painkillers (although not the really nice ones) and sent me home with the message that they’d be in touch.

A few months later I got a letter saying I’d been referred to a consultant and that they wanted to give me a CT scan. CT scans are much more fun than X-Rays (and infinitely more fun than IVUs which are basically a legal form of diagnostic torture) so that was cool. Then I had to go speak to the consultant (pitch up to outpatients, wait for over an hour) to be told the CT was inconclusive and they wanted to do another CT. Could have been done by letter, but at least I was being processed. CT the second was a few weeks ago.

Today I got a letter from my consultant. Turns out I have a kidney stone. It’s not moved since the first CT and they’d like to remove it. Apparently they are now able to see the kidney stone on my original X-Ray “now that they know what they’re looking for”. Clue was in the “I have a kidney stone in my right hand side”, but there you go, at least they found this one (they’re now 2 for 5).

I’m now on a waiting list for a rather fun little procedure where they shove a laser up your… well, lets just say they put you to sleep and when you wake up there’s no stone and it hurts like hell to pee. This is an overnight job which will then involve a couple of days recovery. Why am I telling you all this? Well basically I will require VAST amounts of sympathy during the recovery time and I want you all to be prepared.

On Sunday, just as we were getting ready for squash, The Zozos phone rang. She didn’t get to it in time, ended up throwing the phone across the room as she lunged for it and missed the call. The number was withheld so we just did the whole “If it’s important they’ll phone back” thing.

On the way to the car my phone beeped. New voice mail for my brother. Almost exactly the same time Zos phone beeps. She’s also got voice mail. Before either of us can check it a text pops up on my phone. My brother: call him as soon as I can.

I’ve been here before. Nothing generates a flurry of voicemail and texts like a death in the family. My Grandmother had suffered a fatal heart attack which was one hell of a shock and once again it was my poor old brother having to dish out the news while I stood there in the middle of the carpark looking shellshocked.

So yes. The adage is true. If it’s important they will call back. Just pray they don’t.

It would appear my squash game is getting better as I won my first game this weekend. OK, yes, I had previously taken The Zozo out for a large meal, fed her booze then woke her from an afternoon nap to play so she may have been a tiny bit off form and she may have won every other game, but that’s beside the point. I’m thinking next week feed her more food, more drink, deny the nap entirely and steal her shoes and I may be able to steal two games of the match

All this squash (and by all I mean the 3 hours played thus far) is, unfortunately, taking it’s toll on my delicate hands which are used to typing rather than gripping. As a result I have a blister. Actually, let’s be 100% accurate here: I got the blister during the second match, it burst before the end of that and I have since formed a blister on that old blister which has also burst. My thumb is a mess.

To stem the tide of life threatening lesions on my limbs I decided to investigate squash gloves. Turns out there is really only one glove one should be wearing when playing squash and that’s the Bionic squash glove, a rather snazzy white, black and grey affair made with a leather outer in a number of sizes for a perfect fit… of your right hand. That’s right, I can’t find anywhere that stocks the left handed version of this glove and I’m not learning to play squash cack handed.

What I have found is a similar glove for tennis that allows you to buy right, left or both hands. Not knowing the ins and outs of sports equipment I have no idea what the difference between a squash and a tennis glove is. I suspect they’re the same glove so I may well just get the tennis version and hope no one notices.

The biggest problem with going to the gym is that it can be a bit dull. I entertain myself watching films and TV on my iPhone but that only works on the cross trainer and bikes. For everything else it’s whatever is blaring away on the big TV and in the pool, sauna and jacuzzi¹ it’s just me and my thoughts. Even when we go together there’s not a huge amount of conversation as the gym doesn’t lend itself to that kind of thing.

There is, of course, another way to get regular exercise that burns off calories very efficiently that couples who Love Each Other Very Much can do. OK, for reasons of endurance, it generally doesn’t last as long as a gym session but it’s much more fun, leaves your heart racing and gives you a warm glow and a happy feeling that just can’t be replicated on a rowing machine. I am, of course, talking about squash².

Friday was my first ever game (The Zozo had played many times previously) and I learned all about the rules, the etiquette and the fact that overhead smashes generally end up with me driving the ball into the baseboard or the lights (regulation squash courts need to be about 15 foot taller). We then tried a proper match where The Zozo proceeded to hand my butt to me on a plate winning 6 games to 0.

Sunday was my second game and it was clear I’d absorbed the lessons of Friday. No longer was it serve, *swoosh*, point Zozo on every point. On occasion I was able to return shots, even break serves and, sometimes, score points. At times we even managed rallies. While my butt was still handed to me on a plate (7 games to 0) the plate was much less ornate. Next time I may even win a game

¹I pay a lot of money for the gym so I use everything to get my monies worth.

²Minds out of the gutter people!

Since my records began (over 3 years ago) I have handed over somewhere in the region of £15,000 to the rail companies, mostly National Express East Anglia, formerly One. At the end of my London career I was handing over £361 per month for the privelidge of sitting on the floor in the foyer of London bound intercities and a further £40 a week to get to and from Cromer and my Tai Chi classes. Tot that lot up and it comes to over 6 grand a year. Even when I was working from home it was costing me £80+ every time I went to London (thankfully only a few times a month).

Between stopping work and now I must have spent £50 on the trains tops (which actually equates to quite a few trips as it’s only £6.20 return to Norwich off peak) which is a much better state of affairs. This changed yesterday when I handed over £1436 for an annual season ticket. It’s the cheapest season ticket I’ve had since I lived in Zone 2, something I was quite pleased about… which just goes to show how numb I’ve become the cost of rail travel.

The one downside of my interview suit is that the shoes are phenomenally uncomfortable. They are a pair of stiff leather Churches and the right hand shoe has developed a crease which means that with every step my big toe has a fold of hard leather rammed into it. Normally it’s uncomfortable for a day or two, but gets better. This time the pain seemed to get worse… but not every day.

Worried I may have done something bad to my foot I went to see the nurse at the doctors surgery who first suggested hairline fracture, but then went on to conclude it was tendinitis once I’d pointed out the pain was not everywhere she thought it was. The advice was to rest the foot and it should get better over a couple of weeks. And get better it did, slowly, although on days where I walked further it hurt a bit more.

Last night, however, it was worse than it had ever been, to the point where I was awake for several hours despite copious amounts of fairly potent pain killers. Noting that this was my last weekday before I became gainfully employed, and therefore the last day I could easily do anything about it, I toddled off to the local minor injuries unit. My thinking was that since they had an x-ray there if it needed to be x-rayed it wouldn’t take too long.

The bod there poked and prodded, asked questions, poked some more and then decided that he was fairly sure it wasn’t a stress fracture given I was too fit and healthy and I’d not put undue stress on it, just worn some bloody uncomfortable shoes. He then went on to explain how there was an outside chance that it could be gout, a minuscule chance it could be arthritis related, and a possibility that it could be related to my kidneys being inflamed and not filtering uric acid properly. He went on to tell me that while an x-ray would rule out (or confirm) a stress fracture the chances of it being that were too low to really warrant doing one so he probably wouldn’t and, on reflection, it’s probably best if I did gentle exercise, elevated the leg when resting, applied ice if needed and avoided anything like Deep Heat…

At this point I needed to interject to find out just exactly why one would avoid Deep Heat. Apparently, I was told, it is entirely the wrong thing for an inflammation injury such as this and would simply make it worse. It was at this point I realised what had happened. The day before doing to the doctors, and yesterday, I’d gone to bed with the foot being sore, so I’d applied Deep Heat thinking it would help. Last night I applied masses of the stuff. Instead of making it better I’d just made things worse, it was just tendinitis and perhaps, if I laid off the Deep Heat, it would get better by itself. Whoops :S

This morning I woke up with a slight twinge in my side. Nothing unusual in that. These days I wake up with all kinds of aches and twinges, but todays twinge didn’t go away. Instead it decided to get steadily worse until, at about 8am, I decided enough was enough and I was going to fight back with some of the more potent pain killers in our medicine cabinet. Unfortunately these take time to kick in and I ran out of the quick fix tactical nuclear pain killers some time ago so things started to get even more painful.

After a few minutes walking round the house in a fashion similar to the oh-my-god-I-need-the-loo-but-someone-is-in-the-bathroom thing the people do when they don’t think anyone else is looking [or is that just me?] I decided I’d better pack a bag with a few bits in it just in case this wasn’t going to get better by itself. After all, I know this pain and the conclusion is, more often than not, A&E.

After having packed my bag¹ things were getting to be really quite bad and it was making me cry so I called in reinforcements to take me somewhere with better pharmacological supplies than I have. Unfortunately, en-route we found out that the local drop in places wouldn’t take me and that I was going to have to go to A&E (see, told you). Joy.

1 hour later and I’m being dressed in one of those ever so fetching gowns with a nurse shoving a cannula² in my arm and another nurse doing the blood pressure and temperature thing. Of course, by this time the pain was easing and I’m beginning to think that maybe I should have just ridden it out and not bothered everyone.

6 hours after that and I’ve been X-rayed, pumped full of contrast, X-rayed again several times, peed into tubes and pots, had blood taken and told a number of people that I woke up this morning and I started hurting in the same way I hurt the previous God knows how many times I’ve had kidney stones.

Upshot of it all is they can’t see a stone (although that’s not to say there isn’t one there), they can see inflamation, there is blood in my urine and they’ve given the the pharmacological items I need to stop it hurting should it start again³). Although this morning I was in very real pain time has dulled the memory of the pain and I am left thinking perhaps it was all a storm in a teacup :s Still, for places to take your fiancée on valentines day A&E has to be up there on the list

¹ Clean underwear, clean tshirts, clean socks, laptop, charger for laptop, charger for iPhone, headphones – no toothbrush or toothpaste :S

² You know, the things they jab in your arm with the 18foot metal spikes that stick into your veins and will rip your arm open causing you to bleed to death if you so much as think about looking at it in the wrong way just so they can take blood and pump you full of contrast easily.

³ Unfortunately none of it opiate or synthetic opiate based but I they’re moving away from that these days and at the end of the day if it stops the owie I’m happy.