A beautiful kidney stone*The procedure is called a percutaneous nephrolithotomy. Essentially, this is accomplished by placing a needle into the kidney and passing a wire through the needle into the kidney and down the ureter into the bladder. Then a balloon dilates a tract big enough to insert my nephroscope directly into the kidney to break up and remove the stones. We irrigate with saline to be able to see what we are doing.
Today, the patient had a very odd looking stone; Its vanilla, verrugated outer shell was atypical for a human stone. But then as we broke off the end, we could see that the inside was hollow like a geode with beautiful crystals visible throughout. I just had to get a picture of this unusual treasure while snorkeling through inner-space. I include it for your viewing pleasure. I know that some people will say 'Yuck' based on the awareness of its origin; I however, paused for a moment to reflect on its varied uniqueness before crushing it out of existence.
I know the patient will thank me later.
Kevin
*Posted with patient permission
2 comments:
When I clicked on your pic. I thought that looked like a geode but I could tell it came from in a body. It immediately made my mind think of my Uncle Mark that died last year, way too young, of colitis/rectal cancer. His hobby was using his back hoe to find thousands of geodes. He sold them all over the world and found some amazing specimens himself. Thanks for the memory!
It does look like a beautiful geode. God's handiwork is everywhere, tho we may question some applications.
And I find the process fascinating - modern medical miracles created by caring human engineers to increase quality and quantity of life!
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