Kidney Stone Update #2

Today I went to get another CT Scan and Xray of my abdomen and have my doctor look at the stones progress. Guess what, they are closer to my bladder but still in the ureter. Same ol', same ol'. We talked about how long to wait until taking more drastic measures (fishing the stones out with a net, ouch) and I decided that I would wait another month and see how things are progressing. :(

Kidney stone update (after 2nd CT Scan)

So far there has been no significant pain since the night I went to the ER. Every once in a while I feel a twinge, but it is nothing bad. At my appointment on Friday, the doctor took a look at the new CT scans and it appears that the three stones, that were in my ureter 9 days earlier, have all bunched up fairly close to my bladder. So I guess they are about to pass into my bladder. I'm still drinking 2-4 quarts of water every day, which is quite a lot of water, to help flush the stones out. I guess it is working since the stones are moving.

I scheduled another CT Scan and appointment for 9/30 (Thurs). This should give the stones time to move some more.

My opinions on spyware, browsers and email

How does spyware get on you computer? It is partially due to usage of Internet Explorer(IE) and not having a firewall like ZoneAlarm. There are many, many security problems with IE that allow any website to install these spyware programs that start to take control of your system. It is a fundamental flaw with IE and there are tons of people with the problem of spyware on their system. Here is just one article that talks about these problems:

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/249

To give some credibility to the above SecurityFocus web site, they are owned by Symantec (they guys that do Norton Antivirus).

Here is another site, from Firefox enthusiasts, that has a bunch of frequently asked questions for those that are thinking about switching to Firefox:

http://www.switch2firefox.com/

My recommendation (as well as the SecurityFocus article's) is to stop using IE except for specific websites that require it (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com for example) and start using Mozilla's Firefox web browser. I have been using this browser (or its ancestors) for over 3 years and have never gotten a virus or spyware installed on my system. In addition to the security features, in my opinion, it is far superior in features as well, when compared to IE.

The Mozilla foundation just released their Firefox 1.0 preview release which I recommend that everyone download and install. The URL is:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

What email program are you using? If it is Outlook or Outlook Express, I would recommend dropping those as well due to similar security issues. And of course Mozilla has a very good email client, based on the Mozilla framework, called Mozilla Thunderbird. It has a number of nice features with good security as well. It's website is:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

By the way, these programs are free, open source products so you don't have to worry about any fees. They are also similar to use to IE and Outlook in operations so you shouldn't have any troubles using them.

At night Kyler often tells me that he doesn't like to go to sleep. So I tell him to just lay there and be awake all night.

This morning I went to wake him up, and we were snuggling. I whispered to him, "Kyler, did you stay awake all ngiht? Hmmm? 'Cause I know you don't like to sleep..." He looked up at me, and put his finger on my nose and said, "You're so funny." It was great.

Yesterday I went to my Urologist (boy, that makes me feel old saying that) for him to review my CAT scan films. It turns out I have 3 stones in my left ureter and 3 more in my kidney. Oh joy, that means that the pain isn't over for the ones in my ureter and I still have more to come at some later date when the ones in the kidney start to move. The doctor scheduled another CAT scan for next Friday to see how they stones are moving.

I did learn something about the pain from the doctor. If there is pain in the back, that is indicative of a blockage of the urine. Pain in the front indicates that the stones are on the move.

So far, since Wednesday night, I have only had some very slight pain in the front so I guess that means there has been a little movement of the stones. I'm hoping that is all I get from here on out.

Last Wednesday I had another kidney stone episode. My previous one was around February, 2002. This one was a bit different, no back pain. All of the pain was in my abdomen on the left. It started while I was making dinner and Jenny was at soccer practice with Kyler & Ilea. I started to feel some sharp pain that would come and go with a feeling that I had to urinate. Because the pain was so bad, I decided I better call the Advice Nurse. She said I should go to the ER. So I found Jenny at the soccer field and she drove me to the ER.

After a relatively short time (30 min) in the waiting room, I was moved back to a examination area. That was when the pain was the worst. Of course they wanted a urine sample but I couldn't oblige due all of the fun stuff going on in that area so they gave me a catheter. (That was sure fun, but I was in no mood to care at that point due to the pain. The pain at this point was reaching an 8 out of 10 and it would typically drop to around 2-3 out of 10 and then cycle back up to 7 or 8.) About 30 minutes later the pain started to subside and I was able to rest. We ended up spending almost 6 hours in the ER and saw the doctor for the first time after 3 hours. They gave me a CAT scan and determined that I had 5 stones (three 4mm, a 3mm and a 2mm). I was pretty much out of it during the last few hours because they had given me some medicine that made me very drowsy.

When we left, I wasn't in pain anymore and they gave me a strainer to catch the stones (what fun that is). We got some Percoset and got home around 1:00am. Since it was garbage night, we had to put the garbage out and finally got to bed around 1:30am.

We just got back from a great vacation to California. Here is a short summary:

We started on Wednesday, Aug 18 and drove from Seattle to Sacramento. We arrived in Sacramento at Uncle Ken's place around 2:30 am. The next morning we drove to Fresno and stayed there for a few hours and then headed to Pismo Beach to stay with the Karrs (some friends from our Cal Poly days).

The next morning we looked for a few letterboxes and then visited San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly. Cal Poly sure has changed since we were there. Then we headed up to Los Altos to the Millet's to stay the night.

The next day we headed to Great America for the day. We had a great time but it started to get really busy after 1:00pm. Our favorite rollercoster was Top Gun which we were able to ride twice. The park is trying to turn itself into a partial water park so there were a number of neat water slides. The most interesting one was DownUnder Thunder which is a ramp that you go up and then come back down. We got pretty tired by about 5:00pm so we decided to head up to Napa Valley.

We got to Riverpoint around 7:00pm and got some Groceries for our breakfasts, lunches and dinner. It was a very nice place, we enjoyed it a lot.

Over the course of the week, we did some letterboxing in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park where we visited the Japanese Tea Gardens, walked around the Conservatory gardens and a number of other areas. We had dinner at Creps on Cole, which was very good. We visited Muir Woods, Petuluma and Healdsburg (to have dinner with Jenny's cousin Chela). We saw a number of movies over the week as well: Spiderman 2, I Robot and Bourne Supremency.

Of course we took a day to do some wine tasting. We were surprised at how much the wineries were charging for tasting ($3-$10). We weren't planning on spending much for wine tasting so we went looking for the few that had free tastings. One of our favorites is V. Sattui since they had free tasting of any of their wines and a place to have a picnic.

On Friday, Aug 22nd, we headed back to Los Altos to pick up Kyler and go back to Fresno to stay with the Howards for a couple of days. The weather was nice but hot, it was at least 100 degrees every day. We played in the pool a lot and just took it easy. It was very nice.

On Sunday, we headed back to Los Altos to visit with the Millets. On Monday, we went into San Francisco for Fran's 70th birthday. We took a ferry from Larksburg Landing to the Ferry Building Marketplace and then had lunch at the Garden Room in the Palace Hotel, one of the nicest dining rooms I have ever seen. We headed back to Los Altos, and had cake, opened presents. After this we packed up and headed back to Sacramento to start our trek home.

The next day, Uncle Ken got us Krispy Kreme doughnuts for breakfast and we started our long trip home. It took us 14 hours due to all of the fuel and food breaks. I think I liked driving at night a little better.

All in all, we had a great time. Thanks to everyone who put us up for the night and special thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Howard for taking Ilea and Grandma and Grandpa Millet for taking Kyler.