Kidney Saga part 7

Early in the morning on Tuesday, January 7th, I got moved yet again into my fourth (and final) hospital room. This one was on a busy and heavily monitored floor with lots of nurses and noise. I noted almost immediately that I would prefer the door to be closed when possible because noise bothers me. Sadly, the move put me well out of range of the closest Pokestop, which would make down-time a little more boring, but it was a good little room.

I was told I was going to have my heart checked, and then settled. I was starting to get the feel of the hospital, and was able to order my own breakfast, lunch and dinner that day. The dinner was "homemade lasagna" and was every bit as good as I hoped. I won't be allowed meals like that again for some time, sadly.

At about 11am I got an update from the kidney doctor, who told me the initial screening from UW on my kidneys had come back and it appeared to be lupus. It was not certain yet, but the diagnosis would lead to some decisions, and so he went over the two main medications that I would be looking at and suggested I look them up and decide which one I was more comfortable with. He said neither of them were "good" in the sense that there are a lot of risks and side-effects, but the newer one seemed to work better in women.

So I used my phone and the flaky internet at the hospital and looked them up. And looked them up and looked them up. And read reviews and side effects and effectiveness. And decided on the newer medicine after a lot of reading. Well, it kept me from being too bored, I guess.

I didn't intend to announce the diagnosis because it wasn't yet confirmed, but hubby-Eric put it up on his Facebook almost immediately. I asked him to take it down, but lots of people commented, including some "It's never lupus" jokes from House. I tried those on the kidney doctor later, but he was unfamiliar with the show.

I'm going to note: I was supposed to be feeling sore from the kidney biopsy. At this point I still felt NOTHING. Nothing at all. No pain, no soreness. I mostly didn't even notice the bandage. When the tech said it was a good biopsy, he wasn't kidding.

During the day, despite the closed door, I could hear singing in the hallway. I mentioned it to a nurse, who said there was a singer and a therapy dog on the floor. I was missing Inkwell something awful, so asked if they could send the therapy dog to me if possible. I got to meet the pup in the evening. She sat on my lap for a few precious moments, then did some tricks with her handler. It was nice.

Then I got a visit from the cardiologist, who told me I needed a stress test because the earlier tests on my heart showed a significant under-performance. I've heard of stress tests, but assumed they were all done on a treadmill, which wasn't going to be possible. She said they would induce it, not make me run. I started to have minor anxiety about it because, let's face it, the words "stress test" are kind of scary.

And so to bed...