Dear Hubby...remember him?...is going to the doctor today. He was born with a defective and deformed kidney but no one knew it at the time. It wasn't until he was 20 and began having some major pain and problems that his mother took him to the doctor. This was back in 1973 when medicine seemed pretty advanced but most diagnosing was done with tests and x-rays. Since he was urinating blood and in excruciating pain it didn't take long for them to realize there was something drastically wrong with at least one of his kidneys. His urologist performed surgery, trying to correct the problem...no drainage...instead of removing the kidney. They removed kidney stones, some of them the size of golf balls, and tried to fix the problem the kidney had in emptying. The poison build-up was what was making him so ill at times. It was given a 50/50 chance of being successful.
Along came me into his life. He told me about his physical problem but I wasn't too concerned because he seemed healthy and was able to work and do everything else a young man in his 20s could do. After our daughter was born we went on a fishing camping trip along the Cowlitz River and he went outside to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. When he came back in to the trailer, his face was ghostly white even in the gloom and he told me he'd just urinated a stream of nothing but blood.
We went to see his urologist. The news was grim. The kidney needed to be removed. It was, and he has had 45 years of excellent health since then.
A few weeks ago he mentioned he's been having a lot of tenderness and discomfort on his right side where his remaining kidney is. It comes...it goes. He told me it might be a good idea to see a urologist here in Michigan to establish some kind of medical relationship with one in case anything goes haywire. All his medical treatment had been done in Oregon in the mid-1970s and his urologist had died years before. I found one who appears to be a very good urologist here, and Dear Hubby went to see him. Dear Hubby appears to be in such good health the doctor asked him what he was doing there -- a good sign, I'm thinking. When he told the doctor his past history he's taking it pretty seriously now. He did a thorough exam and had us send away for Dear Hubby's medical records. He'll have them today for the appointment...SHOULD have them, since they were being sent by FAX and not by any mode of delivery or the USPS. We know how abysmally slow all of that is anymore. He's scheduled to have an MRI at the end of the month and we'll move on from there, whatever path the results take us. Like my mom used to say, "Don't borrow trouble." "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," is another good one.
99% of what we fret about never comes to pass anyway, and then when it does we face it, pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, and move on.
Amen.