Just wanted to post an update in case anyone is interested.. haha. It's kinda long -apologies, but its been an.. interesting.. week.
I went down for my Ureteroscopy on Monday. Prior to the surgery they did an Xray and in my momentary consult prior to the surgery, my Urologist noted that the stone didn't look like it had budged. I'd had a definite decrease in the pain over the last few days, and had wondered why that was. He reiterated at that time that I would have a stent in place and I would be able to pull it myself 5 days after surgery.
Anyway... I wake up from the surgery and immediately note that I have a catheter in place... hmmm. Did I miss something in my pre-op? I had a notable amount of pain (probably mostly due to the school bus sized foley jammed up my urethra) but it was well controlled with Fentanyl (whoop whoop!). I was super confused about the cath and the lack of string for the stent. Thought maybe they decided I didn't need the stent after all... or maybe it was tied to the end of the catheter.. and when it came out the string would magically appear???
I make it back to the PACU and my RN says there is a note that the surgeon wants to come see me before I leave - I start to worry that something went wrong at that point. She paged him multiple times and finally got him on the phone. He wasn't able to come down, but told her that during surgery they found a small tumor and ended out doing a TURBT procedure at the same time - hence the foley. She noted he would call me later in the week to give me more details. Off I went feeling pretty darn good for having a general and two procedures done that morning.
When I talked to the urologist the next day he said the stone had actually moved back up into the kidney and between swelling and a naturally tight ureter there was no chance the stone would have passed on its own. There was a stent placed but it would need to remain for 3 weeks to let things settle down and be removed by cystoscopy. The tissue removed in the TURBT was sent for biopsy and pathology would be back in the next week or so.
Fast forward to today - I took out the foley on day 2 as per instructions (thank god!) and aside from the typical stent pain (feeling like i'm being turned inside out when I pee), I feel pretty good. Lots of blood in the pee still and I think I may have lost the scab off the TURBT site this am. I spoke to the urologist and the tumour came back as a low grade, non-invasive bladder cancer. Its sort of like a non invasive skin cancer: as long as you get it all, no further treatment is needed outside of routine surveillance. I will need to go back for a cytoscopy 3 months after I have the stent removed, and annually thereafter.
I'm sitting here now reflecting at the fortuitous timing of this damn freakin' kidney stone. The cancer was caught WAY earlier than normal and had I not had this particular surgeon who insisted on a ureteroscopy instead of an external lithrotripsy I may have found myself in a different situation in a few years from now with a symptomatic bladder cancer. It's funny how things work out sometimes. :-)