Catching up

This blog seems to have followed a common pattern, where there's initial excitement that can go on for years, followed by a gradually tapering off, eventually to nearly nothing, followed by the occasional "I'm going to start blogging more" pledge that never actually pans out.  So I'm not going to promise anything.  I do know that I really like having the early days to check back against for reference, and that I'll regret the long stretches in recent years where there was nothing written here despite things happening in our lives.

Rather than try to remember all that I neglected to post about, I might as well just say what's happening now.  Others in my family are having health issues at the moment, which I won't go into (other than to say "Hi!" and "Get better!"); instead I'll talk about my own.

During a recent vacation to Sydney I had a mild attack of kidney stones, so a part of each day there was spent trekking down to a medical clinic for consultations, scans, diagnoses, etc.  Followed up on it when I got back to Melbourne, and after some more tests, it looks like I'm going to have a percutaneous nephrolithotripsy for them, where they jab a needle into my kidney, break up the stone, and suck out the pieces.  Twice, for the two stones.

It doesn't sound like a lot of fun.  I'll probably have to do three days or so in the hospital for it, and a week off of work.  Mostly I just don't like the idea of being effectively stabbed in the back, and worry about infection and such.  But it should solve the problem for the long term, which is good.

First I need to get some x-rays to make sure my stones aren't the uric-acid kind, which would be awesome because you can get rid of them with drugs; this is unlikely though.  I see the doc again next week.