The Tail of Three Hospitals

I went to the VA hospital ER in Hampton, Virginia on August 29th for some pain meds because I felt a kidney stone moving around. This wasn't my first kidney stone rodeo. I know to get some pain meds as soon as possible. While there, they looked at my blood numbers and one enzyme was just barely out of whack. They suggested that I be admitted so they could observe me. Better safe than sorry, right? The only problem is that I started retaining water like crazy. I'm talking like 20 pounds in just a couple days. They were concerned about my kidneys and I have already been diagnosed with a bad liver. But they needed to find out what caused the retention so that it could be fixed. After staying the weekend in the Hampton VA, they suggested that I go to a larger VA hospital that was more capable of finding the problem. The VA in Richmond (my primary VA) was full, so I went to the VA in Durham. And since it was a new hospital with new doctors, they had to pretty much start over. By this time I had retained 50 pounds of water and was making the Michelin Man look skinny. After a week or so they felt comfortable blaming my bad liver. Since it's not operating at 100%, it can't process salt like a healthy liver. And for those of you who may not know, doctors love to hydrate you with an intravenous saline solution. They were doing that to me and *blamo* I bloated up like a supermodel on Ben & Jerry's. So I was finally on my way back to normal and they transferred me up to Richmond for budget and money reasons. New hospital, new doctors and they wanted to monkey around with me too. But fortunately they didn't make matters worse. So, to make a long story boring, I spent four weeks in three hospitals. I was finally released on September 26th. Now I am facing physical therapy and lots of work to get back to where I was prior to being hospitalized.