Doctor Doctor Give Me the News

So I went to see the doctors today. My primary care physician (PCP) needed to be in the loop. We talked about possible scenarios & how soon I could go back to work. He's willing to prescribe more medication if I feel like I need it.

The urologist took one look at the xrays and told me that there's about a 5% chance that I can pass that stone naturally. It's about 3mm x 5mm which doesn't seem to be that big. But it's a solid object in an area where there shouldn't be any solid objects, so even something that small is too big.

He recommended surgery and someone from his office will call me on Friday to set it up. Likely next week I'll have the procedure done, but will offer more details as I know them. He said it's a relatively simple procedure and should take about 45 minutes. He also said there would be minimal recovery time required as far as not missing more work than I have to. I'll be sore for sure because this has caused some swelling of my left kidney.

He also told me its like laser surgery. They put a small camera inside of me and locate the stone, then use some kind of laser to blast it into smaller pieces. He was a young doctor and he mentioned something about it being like a video game for him.

Oddly enough that didn't bother me. If the doc were older and not of the video game generation it might have bothered me more. The doc didn't look to be much older than me. I knew all of those years playing Atari and Nintendo would come in handy... for someone.