Stilly River Sage wrote: Ragdall!...someone we haven't hear from for a while, who is always doing interesting things. If you two speak or write, tell her to drop in and catch us up on her activity, please!

Hello, SRS and anyone else who may be interested.

I apologize for my lack of participation at Mudcat. Life has been taking too much of my time. I haven't had time for any interesting things, I'm afraid.

I'm currently 1000 km and a two hour ferry ride away from home, unable to drive back home until my husband is released from hospital here. I'm hoping that good health will be returned to him this will be the last chapter in our long saga about the kidney tumor.

My husband was told in December that a small lump on his kidney that was growing was almost certainly cancer, he'd be notified in a week or two of a date for him to go to the big city 800 km away to have it burned off in a minimally invasive outpatient procedure. We were on alert for five months, waiting. The procedure was done May 10th. The biopsy proved the predictions wrong, the lump was benign, the procedure was unnecessary. Good news and no harm done?

My husband didn't return to "normal". He had no appetite, was weak, spent most of his time sleeping. I took him to the local urologist, who was supposed to be doing the "follow up" for the procedure, and to his family practice doctor many times in the weeks that followed.

I was assured that he was well enough to travel. We were told that he needed to get more exercise and he'd be fine. We spent several days driving the 1000 km, to meet our month old great grandson at our daughter's home here. The day that our granddaughter brought the children here to see us, my husband was in much pain. Before they arrived we took my husband to the ER where he spent most of two days before he could be admitted to hospital. Our granddaughter brought the baby to the ER for a short visit then had to drive back to where she lives.

I'm very grateful that we came here. A CT scan revealed that the procedure in May had left a hole in my husband's kidney, the ureter was blocked and fluid was collecting outside the kidney. My husband is now getting the best care possible. The blockage has been cleared, misplaced fluid is being removed, his diabetes is monitored and controlled, antibiotics administered for the infection. Even with the tubes attached, my husband is looking more like himself in that hospital bed than he has since he left the other hospital, May 10th.

Our daughter is a nurse at this hospital, on the floor where he is. She and her coworkers are giving him VIP treatment. I feel badly that we're disrupting her family's life by being here so long -- it looks as if three days will stretch into at least two weeks -- but I'm very grateful that we have a place to stay and a daughter who will advocate for her father's care. Perhaps the doctors at home thought that he was just getting old and that, when I kept insisting that there was something very wrong with his health, I was in denial about him aging.

I'm hoping that the rest of the summer will be less eventful. Sadly, my husband has to give up his plans to return to his birthplace in Europe in September with his university classmates for their 50th grad reunion. He's nervous about something else going wrong medically and not being able to get the care he can get in Canada.

Internet access and time to use it haven't been easy to find. I've bought a wireless router "for the family" here. Now I can use my own laptop which has bookmarks for the sites that I usually visit. I still don't have much time to use it as I spend most of the days at the hospital.

I hope that I'll be home soon and able to begin to catch up on what has been happening with other Mudcat people.

rags