I recently had 2 nephrostomy operations, about 3-4 days apart. The first one, I was slightly "put under" (made a little loopy) while they poked a hole through the side of my abdomen and ran a tube, with a stent, into the donor kidney. The second procedure was supposed to simply place a larger wire within the existing tube (to drain more fluid from the kidney), but the wire wouldn't quite fit in the tube. So the doctor had to quickly remove the existing tube, put a new one in, run in a new, larger wire, stitch everything back up and then send me back to my hospital room. The second procedure was done without any sort of anesthetic or anything; I was 100% conscious and quite aware of the pain. Two small injections into the kidney helped dull the site where the tube was directly inserted, but it didn't extend too far beneath the surface of the skin.
I didn't take any pain meds for the entire duration of my 8-day stay. I'd rather be in pain than get all my plumbing backed up (as pain medication tends to do).
--JMH
Received on Tue May 27 2014 - 18:09:08 CDT