Money Money Money By the Pound!

Check it out:

These are some of the bills from Pete's kidney stone adventures.

And here's a list:
First emergency room trip: $1,160
Second emergency room visit where they didn't help Pete in ANY way: $973
First surgery that didn't work: $13,238
Second surgery: $15,377
One doctor bill: $5,056
Another doctor bill: $926

We're still waiting for 3 or 4 more bills to come from that whole awesome week.  But the total so far is...wait for it...

$36,730

No, I did not misplace my comma.  And the photographic evidence shows I'm not lying about the numbers.  It's too bad we have to pay, even when we don't get anything out of it.  Grrr about that.

So, to sum up:

Kidney stone week: $36,730, plus pain and agony and stress.

Aftereffects: still agony and stress

Health Insurance: priceless

Just Can't Get Enough!

A couple of Sundays ago, this happened:

How, you may ask? Pete sat down. Yep. Just plain old sat on Ivy's bed, and the frame broke. Just add it to the list, my dear. Here's a closer look:

We "fixed" it. It's very white trash, but we turned the bed around so you can't tell. (We drilled long boards along the frame on both sides. I should submit it to the website There, I Fixed It.)

That day at church I was joking with a couple of friends about "what's going to break next? a kid's arm?"

...

...I shouldn't have done that.

Because then our cute little Tuna decided to up and croak. This is all I have left of it now:

It was about time, I guess. It should have probably lasted only about 6 years, and it lasted 12 years. My stomach started getting all churny at the thought of having a car payment again. Ugh.

But.

Look at Tuna's replacement!

I think this car was especially meant for us. It's a Chevy Cobalt, it has five million buttons in it (including seat warmers-how cool is that?), we got it at a great price at a great rate... I'm still trying to think of a name for it. But our minivan doesn't have a name, so maybe it will be nameless for a while.

In the non-broken side of my life, my parents decided to be all awesome (like they always are) and got me some new trees for my backyard!

I can't wait until they're all big and pretty and giving us lots of shade.

This one has lost a lot of leaves, though, in the insanity we Idahoans call "wind". (If I could, I would seriously dome my whole backyard. Like a big greenhouse or something. Stinking wind. Which blew all five copies of my Sunday paper all over my neighbor's backyard yesterday. Sheesh.)

So, back to the whole "what's going to go wrong next?" You know, besides car wrecks, and sickness, and broken air conditioners, and cameras, and other car deaths, and beds. That's right! The fun hasn't stopped there!

Pete is back in the the hospital today, with his 6th kidney stone. (No matter what/how much he drinks, he will always produce stones. He's just lucky that way.) You can read about his last experience here and here. Pete went in last Thursday, and the doc told Pete to take some drugs and he should pass it on his own. Things seemed fine, until last night, when his pain came back with a vengeance. After a few very frustrating hours at the hospital, and a 2 a.m. call to our urologist, Pete got admitted to the hospital in the wee hours, and he'll be getting surgery tomorrow.

Today I had this song running through my head. (I can't POSSIBLY imagine why. *sigh*)

(P.S. Young Dave Gahan looks like Shia LaBeouf. And 80s dancing is really funny.)

The Rolling Stones

Well, I was wrong when I said "this stone too shall pass". Lucky, lucky Pete is presently in the hospital, and has a very personal date with our urologist tomorrow morning. This morning he woke up in pain at our magic hour of 4:30 (when these warm fuzzy feelings of a stone tearing up your insides decides to always happen) and had to go back to the hospital. Pete saw the doc this afternoon, and he told Pete he'd take the more drastic route of lasering the stone out for him.

Pete told me yesterday that I "stole his kidney stone thunder" by blogging about him. So when he comes home, and detoxes, I'm sure you can get the full story on his blog. But in the meantime, you at least get an update here on how he's doing. And if he gets mad that I blogged about him again, I can always punch him in the kidney and take away his drugs.

For those of you who have not had stones, take a gander at this picture (yep, that's a kidney stone), realize why these bad boys hurt so much, and thank your lucky stars you haven't had the pleasure of feeling one of these coming down your ureter. If you have had stones, your kidney is probably throbbing with the remembrance of the pain right now. Massage that beautiful organ and tell it it was just a nightmare, and go drink some water!

Pete's "Dragon"

My poor stoned husband.

Stoned as in full of morphine and vicodin, and "stoned" as in....kidney stones.

I woke up this morning at 4:30, and Pete was pacing in our room, and I thought, "Great. Here comes the $1000 morphine trip to the hospital." And no, that's not a typo-they have to do a CT scan and each cute little picture of your insides costs about $500 each. It's lovely.

You may ask how I know so much about this. Besides my own experience to fall back on, this makes Pete's 5th kidney stone. One he passed while lying on the bathroom floor; the others we've had to go to the hospital.

So here's hoping he passes the stone soon. Here's hoping we can see it so the doctor can analyze it and get Pete some meds to help him not form stones any more. (By the way, he has about 6 or 7 more sitting in his kidneys right now.) Here's hoping Pete can slay his dragon. But not Elliott from the movie, because even though the little boy is dang ugly and has 70s hair, I always did like the dragon.