Jenni's Big Adventure

DAY 1--Saturday 9/26/09
I woke up at 1am because Jackson was fussy. I went in and calmed him down then somehow managed to get back in my bed. I was having really bad back pains and obviously the Tylenol hadn't helped. I took 2 more and tried to find a comfortable position in bed, which was impossible. Finally around 2am, I got up and called the Family Care Unit (kind of like the ER for pregnant women after 20 weeks). I told them I was concerned it might be kidney pain since it was in the middle of my back and only on my left side. I know back pain in pregnancy isn't uncommon, but it tends to be in your lower back and across both sides. The nurse asked if I had a history of kidney problems and even though I had been thinking it might be kidney related, I hadn't thought about the kidney stones I had just after having Jackson in December, 2009. When she asked me about the history, I said yes. She suggested that I try a heating pad on medium for maybe 20-30 minutes but if it didn't improve to come in and get checked out. At this point I was having difficulty talking to her. I hung up the phone and got the heating pad set up in my bed. I don't think I lay there 20 minutes before I decided it wasn't working at all and I'd need to head in to the hospital.

I called Trysta and David to come watch Jackson. I was thinking one of them could stay with him and the other could take me to the hospital. But they'd had a few drinks the night before and that made it not worth the risk to have one of them drive. While they were both perfectly fine, and probably could've driven, there was no reason to take that chance. But they were obviously okay to watch Jackson (especially since he was asleep and wouldn't be up for a few hours). So I called another friend (Laura) and she came and picked me up to take me to the hospital. By the time I had phone calls made, and everyone got dressed, came to the apartment, and Laura got me to the hospital, it was around 4am. I was in enough pain that it was hard to walk or talk at all. When we got to Labor & Delivery they hooked me up to monitors to check Alex's heart rate and make sure I wasn't having contractions. They also took blood and urine samples to send to the lab. Alex was fine, and I wasn't contracting at all. When the labs came back there was blood in my urine which was indicative of a kidney stone. They gave me IV morphine and started me on fluids. Laura went home since it was obvious I wouldn't need a ride home any time soon.

More tests. I got an X-Ray and an ultrasound to see if they could find the kidney stone. They could see the stone on the ultrasound but not for sure on the X-Ray. The only downside is that ultrasounds aren't very good for determining the size of a stone. The best ways to do that are either with an X-Ray with contrast, an MRI, or a CT with contrast. The ones with contrast were out because those tests require a long exposure to radiation. Once they inject the contrast, the procedure itself goes really slow. That much radiation was not good for Alex. And Yokota doesn't have an MRI machine. The ultrasound did show, however, that my bladder was only getting urine from my right kidney, not my left. That meant that the stone had blocked my left uretur, which is not good. At that point, the OB at Yokota decided that the stone probably needed to come out. Normally that would mean a trip to Yokosuka, the naval base in Japan about 3 hours from Yokota. Unfortunately, the urologist from Yokosuka had gone back to the states a year earlier than expected and his replacement wasn't there yet. So instead I went to a Japanese hospital.

Around 9am, they sent me by ambulance with a translator, nurse, and med tech to a local hospital. It was about a 45 minute drive, but the bumps down to the ambulance and on the road were causing some serious pain. At this point I was getting 5mg of IV morphine whenever I needed it, as often as every hour. We eventually got settled in in the Japanese hospital. The translator, nurse, and tech usually just stay until the patient is admitted. Before they would admit me though, they had to do a bunch more tests (many of which had already been done at Yokota). More baby checks (still perfectly fine) and another ultrasound. Unfortunately that meant around a 3 hour wait. And even though the Yokota people had morphine for me, they had transferred me to the Japanese hospital people and couldn't give me any of it. And the Japanese hospital wouldn't give me any pain meds until I saw a doctor. I also hadn't eaten since 7am (and that was just crackers and milk) so I was really glad I had small boxes of raisins in my purse to keep my blood sugar from bottoming out.

I finally got in to see the urologist, who gave me some pain meds. They pretty much didn't help at all, but it was better than nothing at least. He did the ultrasound and couldn't see the stone, just that my kidney was swollen. The basic gist of what I got from him (via the translator) was that any further testing would be unsafe for the baby and that taking the stone out under general anesthesia wasn't a good idea either. So he suggested I just stay on pain meds until the stone passed. Not exactly what the OB at Yokota had planned on, but it's not like I could force him to take the stone out. So we loaded back up in the ambulance and headed back to the base. At this point, my pain had moved from my back down to my bladder and groin area. And it wasn't nearly as intense.

We got back to Yokota around 3pm with basically nothing accomplished. There had been discussion about being in the Japanese hospital and not knowing how long they would keep me. They make you stay for a week after having a vaginal birth, which is MUCH less than the states (usually 24-48 hours). It didn't even cross Yokota's OB's mind that they wouldn't take the stone out.

While I had been gone, the OB had talked to a urologist at Kadena AB (the Japanese base on Okinawa) about my situation. She said that it takes 4-6 weeks with an obstructed kidney to cause damage, so short-term we weren't worried about that. Her suggestion was to get my pain under control and keep and eye on the stone and hope that it would pass. In the mean time, the urologist at Misawa (ANOTHER AB in Japan--since there wasn't a radiologist on call at Yokota for the weekend) who was reading my earlier imaging tests found the stone on the x-ray and thought it was measuring about 6mm. Generally the opinion is that anything 5mm or smaller can be passed, and anything bigger than that has to be surgically removed. But the OB at Yokota thought that maybe due to pregnancy hormones and things being generally more flexible and dilated that I might be able to pass it even though it was 6mm.

The plan was then to control my pain and see if I would pass it on my own. The goal was to get me to be able to control my pain with oral meds and get me off of IV pain meds so I could go home.


DAY 2--Sunday 9/27/09
Throughout the night I still needed IV pain meds. They'd switched from morphine to dilaudid because it seemed to work better and last longer. I was taking Tylenol #3 as my oral meds in between IV doses. The whole day was pretty much just pain meds, some eating, testing blood sugar, and monitoring me. We figured out pretty quickly that the T3 wasn't going to control my pain so we switched to Percocet. The OB had originally offered Percocet but when the discussion was me maybe going home, I didn't want to be on Percocet because I wouldn't be able to take care of Jackson. So I requested the T3. At that point we also thought based on where my pain was that the stone had possibly moved into my bladder. But early into the day on Sunday I was having enough back (ureter) pain that it was obvious that wasn't the case. They had been straining my urine since I got back to the base and there was no sign of a stone having been passed. During the day on Sunday and Sunday night I would go up to 10 or 12 hours without needing IV meds and get excited about maybe going home, but in the end I always ended up with intense pain not controlled by the Percocet and needing IV dilaudid.


DAY 3--Monday 9/28/09
New medication plan. Tylenol every 6 hours scheduled. It may seem retarded to even bother with Tylenol at this point, but it really helped the other meds work longer. That's why vicodin, Percocet, t3, etc. are all combinations of a stronger narcotic and Tylenol together. The other part of Percocet is oxycontin, so they were giving me 15mg of oxycontin every 4 hours with an additional 5mg every 2 hours if I needed it, and IV dilaudid every hour on top of that if I REALLY needed it. Turns out that 15mg of oxycontin wasn't doing anything at all for me, so after 8 hours, they changed it to 20mg, plus still the 5mg every 2 hours and still the dilaudid.

The OB called and talked to the urologist at Kadena again to basically say, "We need a new plan" because it was becoming clearer every day that I wasn't going to get the pain under control with oral meds. That meant I was going to stay in the hospital until I passed the stone, which also wasn't looking like a very likely scenario. Kadena has two urologists, and they were sending one to Yokosuka for 2 weeks to fill in until a permanent replacement could get there. He was supposed to get there the next day, and she planned on sending me to see him then. In the mean time, maintain pain management.

The urologist did give her an idea of some possible solutions. Option A--put a stint in to allow the urine to drain from my kidney to my bladder. It would have to stay in until the baby is born because the stint would actually be smaller than my ureter, so there's no way I would pass the stone on my own. Option B--put in some kind of external tube out my back to allow my kidney to drain that way, while still giving the stone a chance to pass through my ureter on its own. Option C--surgically remove the stone, put in a stint to hold open my ureter while it healed from the surgery, then after 2 weeks remove the stint. Option C requires general anesthesia which could cause complications for the baby, but still seems like it might be the best option. None of these could be done at Yokota, though, since we don't have a urologist there.


DAY 4--Tuesday 9/29/09
The urologist from Kadena spent the morning getting checked in at Yokosuka, so the OB didn't get to talk to him until the afternoon. When she did talk to him, they decided sending me there would be a bad idea since he'd only be there for 2 weeks. Any procedure he did may require a recovery time of longer than 2 weeks and if they put a stint or a drain in, there wouldn't be anyone at Yokota to take it out and he wouldn't be back at Yokosuka until Feb. I asked about sending me to Kadena instead of Yokosuka but I guess they don't have the equipment that would be necessary to do any of the suggested procedures at Kadena. The decision was made to instead send me to Tripler in Hawaii. I think it's an Army base, but it has a good medical reputation, and that's where pretty much any complicated medical situation gets sent from anywhere in the pacific.

I had been doing really well with pain management and just playing the wait and see game. Then on Tuesday, things started going downhill. I'd been constipated for days, but there wasn't much I could do about it since the narcotics I was taking for pain were contributing factors to that and I couldn't stop taking them. At lunch I couldn't eat very much, and a few hours later, I threw up what little I had eaten. I was having what I thought were stomach cramps from the constipation, but they turned out to be contractions. They switched me into another room where they could monitor Alex and the contractions. I threw up some more before they transferred me and started feeling really really crappy. The monitors showed Alex's heart rate was fine, still as perfect as usual, but that I was having contractions. They weren't regular at all, and I wasn't dilating or effacing at al, so they weren't causing progress towards delivery either. Pretty much they were just a side effect from all the GI issues I was having. Any time there is "irritation" in your gut it can cause irritation in your uterus and therefore contractions. They were painful, but nothing crazy.

At that point my temperature was creeping up, too. It wasn't a "fever" so they weren't concerned, yet. But they were definitely keeping an eye on it and they also sent blood to the lab to check my white blood cell count to make sure it wasn't elevated (indicating an infection)--it was fine. They mostly just kept pumping me full of fluids and watching me, plus IV phenergan to help with the nausea. I started feeling better and they gave me a bisacodyl suppository to help with the constipation. I also got my scheduled dose of Tylenol via suppository since I'd been puking earlier. A few hours of rest and I was feeling much better. They're not really sure what brought it on, but my temp regulated and I stopped throwing up, so they weren't as concerned.


DAY 4--Wednesday 9/30/09
The morning was normal, and around 1pm the medical evacuation team came to the OB floor and got me and my stuff. We headed out to the plane and after sitting on the ambulance for an hour waiting for the crew to get the plane ready to go and the plane to take on fuel, we boarded. At this point there was one patient from Korea headed to a hospital in California somewhere for metal health issues. There was another guy from Yokosuka that had to ride up to Yokota (3 hours) in an ambulance. He was on a litter the whole time and he had an escort with him. Then there was another guy who had some kind of GI issues that was on the same floor as me at Yokota. In the Family Care Unit, one side is Labor & Delivery and the other side is medical surgery. He was on the med surg side. His wife came with us, too. So it was 4 patients plus 2 escorts from Yokota to Kadena. Plus of course flight nurses and med techs to take care of us on the way.

The flight was pretty uneventful. As soon as we got to cruising altitude, I decided I was ready to lie down. They had me as category 2B which is "litter for comfort," meaning they had a litter available for me to lie on but I didn't have to stay on it the whole time like the other guy. I was in a lot of pain at that point, mostly from the jostling of the ambulance ride and the plane taking off. I got some pain meds and lay down and started feeling a little better. The meds they were giving me weren't enough to get on top of the pain, but took the edge off at least. When we landed they decided I was better off staying on the litter and being carried off the plan rather than trying to walk down the steps.

Once we arrived at Kadena and got everyone loaded onto the buses, we headed to Camp Lester, which is a nearby Army base where the hospital is located. Each time we changed crews, there was a process of transferring meds and giving reports on all of our conditions, etc. The transfers from the OB staff to the transport staff at Yokota, then to the flight staff, then to the transport staff at Kadena all seemed pretty seamless. But the transfer from the transport staff to the hospital staff at Camp Lester was a problem. It took over 2 hours for them to get everything figured out and to get me meds. I ended up being in a LOT of pain before they finally got to me. Plus the guy they sent in to check me in was a complete idiot. He was obviously in training and had no clue what he was doing. He asked half of the questions wrong or took the answers down wrong and had to come re-do my pregnancy history. Then he needed help figuring out how to strain my urine. By the time he came in to draw blood for labs, I was done. He had to go ask another tech how to work a butterfly needle, and I started crying. When she came in and saw how upset I was she knew right away why. She sent him out of the room to go get something and asked if it was bothering me that he was training. I told her that normally I'm a patient person with trainees because I know everyone has to learn sometime, but with the pain and the situation, I was just not in the mood to be used as a training tool right then. She said she would take care of it and incompetent boy never showed back up. After labs, they finally got me some pain meds and I was able to sleep. Although for some reason the 3rd shift doctor decided I needed to be hooked up to a fetal heart rate and contraction monitor so I was strapped to the bed all night.


DAY 5--Thursday 10/1/09
Day 5 actually lasted 41 hours instead of just 24 since Japan is 17 hours ahead of Hawaii.

Since I couldn't get up or walk at all like I had been, my feet and ankles were the size of melons when I woke up. Luckily the day time doctor said I didn't need to be constantly monitored (which is what the Yokota OB said, too) so I was able to walk around and get the swelling down considerably. On my hospital walks, I even got to take some pictures of the view from the hospital of the ocean and such. They were taken from the "typhoon ramp" which is I guess just the escape route they use if there’s a typhoon and a bunch of people need to evacuate in a hurry.

Throughout the morning people from the transport team were in and out getting paperwork and taking my suitcase down to the buses. We picked up 2 more patients and 3 escorts for the trip to Hawaii so we needed 2 buses for all of the people and bags. They came to get me around 3pm to head to the flight line. I rode in a seat on the bus until we got to the plane, but they put me on the litter once we got there so I could just start there and not have to move after take off. It was a good thing because once again the pain meds were on a delay so I was in quite a bit of pain by the time I even got loaded onto the plane.

The plane left Japan around 6pm and landed in Hawaii at around 9am on the same day. Gotta love that International Date Line! The flight was interesting to say the least. I spent pretty much the entire time on the litter. I did try to eat something and they tried to prop me up as best they could into a sitting position, but it didn't really work and I ended up choking. The problem was I couldn't sit up because I was strapped to the litter. After some flailing they figured out there was a problem and unstrapped me. I was fine right away, but they went ahead and got me down to sit in a seat to finish my food. Once I was done eating, I walked a little, went to the bathroom, and back to the litter. I had oxygen on the whole time. My level had been down to 86 when I first got on the plane, which I think was due to being too far down on the litter, and therefore really flat instead of at an incline. Once I scooted back and had my back more on the back rest, I felt okay. But for the time I was sitting in the chair and not on oxygen, I did start to feel kind of bad. With just a little oxygen I was fine, but they kept me on it for the whole flight. Plus I was getting IV fluids for the whole flight and pain meds throughout as well. It was a rough flight, and super long (10 hours total) but I was glad to have it over with.

We all got off the plane and loaded onto ambulances for the ride from Hickam AFB (where we landed) to Tripler (where the hospital is). Somewhat bumpy (and therefore painful) but also a short ride. I was checked into the hospital and in my room by 10am, and I was exhausted! I called everyone to let them know I'd made it and then tried to sleep between vitals checks and doctor visits, etc.

Thursday afternoon the OB visited and basically said that they were keeping me in the OB ward so they could monitor my baby, but that I was urology's patient and they'd be calling the shots. Then she took me off all of my pain meds and started me back on just morphine plus oral Tylenol every 6 hours. Since getting off IV pain meds wasn't really a goal anymore, she decided the simpler the better. I got what's technically called a PCA but what I refer to as "my magic morphine button." I got 1mg of morphine every time I pushed the button and they set it to only let me get any every 10 minutes. It wasn't nearly what I'd been on but it seemed to do the trick throughout the evening.

The urologist visited later that evening and he said the plan was to watch things until Monday and see if I passed the stone on my own. After reviewing the CT they'd done earlier (almost as soon as I got there) they could tell the stone was now down by my bladder. On the previous ultrasound and x-ray from Yokota it'd been up by my kidney. So it already moved down through my whole ureter, and it only looked to be 3mm-5mm in size, so he thought I might be able to pass it on my own. If I didn't pass it by Monday, he'd put a stint in to help the flow of urine from my kidney to my bladder, making the ureter unobstructed and therefore less painful. The plan also included staying on the IV pain meds as long as I needed them.


DAY 6--Friday 10/2/09
I woke up at 6am to go through rounds with both doctors. I told the OB I was in lots of pain from being asleep all night and therefore not pushing the button and getting pain meds. So she changed the interval to 8 minutes instead of 10. Within a few hours I was caught up to the pain and the morphine was enough for the rest of the day. The urologist visited and said basically the same thing he'd said the night before.

Around 0730 they brought me my breakfast tray, and within 5 minutes the urologist came in. He said they'd examined my case as a board and felt they should present me with one other option. Go in today and take the stone out, put in a stint for a few days, then take it out within a week and send me back to Japan. Yes, please! I pick that option! My number one question was anesthesia. I'd been told at Yokota that if they wanted to take the stone out, it'd require general anesthesia, which was true at the time because the stone was so high up. But now the stone was much lower, so they could do it with just a spinal. Once I found that out, I was all about getting it out, and getting it out NOW! He mentioned that, "another surgeon was willing to do the surgery" which made me wonder why he wasn't, but whatever. He took my breakfast away and said nothing by mouth (not even water) until after the surgery. Bummer.

Shortly after they came and got me for an ultrasound. The first cool thing was, hey, extra pictures of Alex are always nice. The second thing was they had a monitor mounted on the screen so you could see what they were seeing without having to crane your neck and she didn't have to lean either. That was pretty cool. She measured all the stuff and I got to see everything again (but much clearer this time since he's bigger now). She printed out some good pictures which I will eventually scan and post. She also said he's measuring just a little big, which is fine since he measured a bit big at the last ultrasound, too. Then back to my room to wait for surgery.

All they told me was that it would be sometime in the afternoon, but they didn't have a time. I was just waiting around until they came to get me. They finally did around 1pm and wheeled me down to the surgery area. Everything went pretty quick once I got down there. New IV site, fluids, antibiotics, forms to fill out, etc. Then they took me into the OR and I was on the table. They did the spinal which I held surprisingly still for. Then they laid me down and things obviously started going numb from my feet up. That's when I started getting nervous. They put a sheet up to form a curtain by my head so I couldn't see what they were doing and put an oxygen mask on me, too. There were all kinds of people and all kinds of movement going on around me. I couldn't get myself to relax. I told the nurse anesthetists that I was nervous and couldn't calm down and she told me, "There's no reason for me to give you any drugs for it so you'll have to relax on your own." It sounds mean now that I type it but the way she said it wasn't mean at all. She was really nice, actually. I asked her when they were going to start and she said they already had, so then I calmed down quite a bit. I think since I wasn't asleep and I still had feeling from my belly button up that I was worried I'd be able to feel what they were doing. Plus it was the same anesthesia that I had for my c-section and I could definitely feel the moving around and pulling they did to get Jackson out. I managed to tune everything out and keep myself relatively calm for the rest of the procedure, which was about an hour and 15 minutes. Towards the end I could feel the spinal starting to wear off a little and that freaked me out. I felt Alex move and I told the nurse it was wearing off, and she told me it wasn't and I was fine. Then I felt someone leaning on my foot and I told her again that I could feel stuff and it was wearing off. Again she assured me that it wasn't wearing off and that she would see signs of that before I had any way to communicate to her that I thought it was. Okay, I relaxed again. But then I felt them touching me again, and I lost it. "Are you SURE it's not wearing off?!" "I'm sure, I promise I won't let it wear off and they're almost done." I wasn't satisfied but managed to stay relatively calm until they finished. They had been using a laser to break up the stones, so we all had on some special goggles. When she came and took those off and put my glasses back on, I knew we were really close to being done and that made me feel much better.

Once we were all done we moved to recovery. Other than being freezing and needing lots of heated sheets, blankets, and even a warmer thing that I think they mostly use for babies, I was good. They took me to labor and delivery for 4 hours to recover and monitor everything. I was supposed to be on a clear liquid diet but they took my sugar and it was down to 75 so they let me eat real food. I think that's the only time I've been glad to have gestational diabetes. I hadn't eaten in 21 hours so I was STARVING. Everything looked good in recovery (labor & delivery) except for a few contractions, which were mild and pretty much expected. Anytime the mess with things in your abdomen, it can cause uterus irritability which can cause contractions. Like all those before they didn't actually do anything or cause any progress so they were of little concern.

The urologist came to visit me in recovery. I've had a bunch of doctors and I can't keep them all straight. But the one who did the surgery (who was VERY nice!) was not the same one who'd been following me throughout my stay (not quite as nice). He told me that they would want to keep my stint in even if I passed the main stone. He said there were lots of smaller stones that the surgeon saw, plus the fragments that were broken off during surgery. So leaving the stint in would allow those to help pass, too. Also, the stint would need changed after 4-8 weeks. Then, it can't be removed until we can do a CT scan to verify that all the stones are out. But I can't have a CT while pregnant, so basically the stint has to stay in (after being changed) until after Alex is born. That means staying in Hawaii until I have him. I managed to wait until he left the room to start crying. It was pretty upsetting to think about being stuck in Hawaii without Mike and Jackson (at least not for the whole time) plus having Alex here with (Army) doctors I don't know, and not having any friends or anything here.

Shortly after I returned to my regular room, I passed the stone. I had some serious stomach pain and cramping which I thought was a contraction. I even thought, "If I have another one that strong, I'll have to call the nurse in here to monitor me." I had to stop what I was doing and breathe through the pain. But it was short-lived, which is part of what made me think it was a contraction. The next time I peed, there was the stone. YAY! It's out! It looks huge to me. They kept saying 6mm after the surgery, but 6mm looks a lot bigger than I anticipated. It looks like a kernel of unpopped pop corn but it's a little bigger than that. They'll collect it and any smaller stones I pass and send them to the lab for analysis. Hopefully once they know what it's made of, they may be able to give me good advice on how to avoid them in the future.


DAY 7--Saturday 10/3/09
During rounds the OB said I was good to go and he was ready to discharge me whenever urology was ready to release me. The urologist said I could be discharged whenever I want, but I asked to stay until Monday. We also discussed me going back to Japan. He said he's fine with me going back and then either getting a urologist there or coming back to Hawaii in 4 weeks to have someone here change the stint. Japan could be an off-base doctor or one at another base in Japan. Then after Alex is born, I can have a CT done on-base at Yokota and a urologist anywhere can take the stint out. We had a problem getting a civilian Japanese doctor to remove the stone while I'm pregnant, but may not have a problem finding one to change out the stint while pregnant, and should definitely not have a problem getting one to take it out once Alex is born.

Around 9pm I started leaking fluid, but no one seemed concerned except me. The OB said to just keep an eye on it.


DAY 8--Sunday 10/4/09
I woke up at 6am to a huge increase in leaking fluid. I immediately called the nurse and this time they started taking me seriously. They sent me up to labor and delivery to test the fluid to see if it was amniotic fluid or urine. When I got out of the bed, there was a huge spot where I'd leaked throughout the night. I was really scared that if it WAS amniotic fluid, I'd leaked a lot of it over 12 hours, which is not good. But once I got up to L&D they did a few tests and it turned out to not be amniotic fluid. Just urine. Gross, but a huge relief. Then they called in urology. It turned out that the stint, which was supposed to end in my bladder, had actually come out the other end of my bladder, and was basically draining my bladder constantly. Again, gross. So they shoved it back into place. Not a comfortable procedure obviously. All is well now, just have to take antibiotics since the stint was on the outside of my bladder but is now back in. They don't know why or how it happened and had no advice on preventing it from happening again.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Just chillin in my hospital room, watching TV and reading. I'm being discharged tomorrow after I talk to the social worker to figure out when/how I'm going home and where I'm staying until then. And of course I'll have to be released by OB and urology, so who knows what time I'll get out of here.


DAY 9--Monday 10/5/09
In the morning I had an ultrasound to make sure the stint is in the right place. It's the only time I think an ultrasound has ever been a painful experience for me. She was really digging that want into my ribs and side to get a good picture of my kidneys. Then I came back to my room and had breakfast, followed by a non-stress test. A non-stress test is where they hook me up to monitors to see if I'm having contractions and also to measure Alex's heart rate. I'd had two at Yokota, but since I arrived at Tripler (Day 5) I'd had them twice a day. They only last 20 minutes, but I was pretty sick of them. You can't really talk during it or it messes up the contraction monitor and they seemed pretty pointless since everything was always totally fine. I'm hoping that was the last nst for a while!

Then I got to take a shower. One of the best showers of my life. I'd had the chance on a fairly regular basis throughout the whole ordeal to shower, kind of. But one of the first things that happened at Yokota early on Day 1 was that they put in a hep lock. And when one went bad, they'd just take it out and find a different spot. You should see how many bruises are on my forearms from all the different ones. But that also means that showers came with a plastic baggie over my arm to keep them from getting wet. Finally on Day 7 they decided that since I'd passed my stone I could be off of IV fluids and just drink my water by mouth now. So the shower that day didn't involve a plastic baggie, but was one of the coldest showers I'd ever taken. I suffered through it because I felt gross, but it was definitely not enjoyable. Today's was MUCH better and actually hot. It's probably the longest I've gone without a satisfying shower. Plus when I got out, I put on CLOTHES instead of pajamas in anticipation of my pending discharge from the hospital.

Finally around 5pm I had arrangements for my hotel stay done and the discharge paperwork was done and I was set FREE!! I took a picture of my first views of freedom, although it wasn't very exciting. I'll upload when I get back to Japan. Still no word on flights yet, but that should hopefully come together tomorrow. The Air Force Liason at the hospital told me to make reservations for 4 nights, but that I probably wouldn't be staying that long. I'm anxious to get back, but right now just relieved to be free from the hospital. More info to follow as I get it!