Day 264, Year 6 Successful Trip to MGH
Date: Friday, July 15, 2011
Weather: Temps Back in the Mid-70’s, Sunny
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

MGH stands for Massachusetts General Hospital and every time we go there we are so impressed with the efficiency and the friendliness of the staff and the feeling of competence and caring of the physicians. We actually arrived almost 40 minutes early for our 6 am appointment and you would think it was mid-day in terms of the activity happening in outpatient surgery. The place was buzzing at 5:20 am. Mark was called back at about 6:10 am and we were told that he would be prepped and set for an 8 am surgery. By 9:30 am Mark was in recovery and Dr. Cutie (you’ve got to love his name) met with me to report what had been done. The removal of the stones in the bladder was successful, but the doctor still has no real idea why Mark’s bladder has just stopped working. At this point he feels that the cause of Mark’s distended bladder might be behavioral-years of simply not fully emptying his bladder. He does not think it was caused by an enlarged prostate which is what we thought was the problem. But regardless of the cause, the doctor refers to it as a neurogenic (spell check is trying to make me change this to Neutrogena) bladder. He found one place in the bladder that doesn’t look “quite right” so he took a sample for a biopsy and he will call with those results in about seven days. He says he really doesn’t think it is anything, but that it needed to be checked. On August 1 we return to MGH and Dr. Cutie will do testing on just how much urine is being emptied through the catheter and will discuss the options for the future. So this is really a waiting game.

By 11:30 am we had eaten lunch in an MGH cafeteria where the food was quite good and the prices were much less than in the restaurants in the area. There is a Whole Foods supermarket close-by but the cafeteria prices are even better than the take-out food there. Plus, it was quite convenient to eat in the hospital cafeteria as Mark was starved and didn’t want to wait until we could walk a few city blocks to other possibilities. Even after lunch, Mark was still a little woozy from the anesthesia, but he was able to walk to the car just fine and slept much of the way back to the Cape. We were too late to pick the boys up from Summer Camp, so Heather picked them up and we went to her house so Mark nap with Sam and Jonah while I tried to be helpful once Sam and Jonah got up from nap. Heather had articles to write and post on her blog site, but I’m afraid that with mommy there Oma’s charms were not sufficient to wrestle either of the boys away. No matter what I offered, mommy was much more interesting. But despite this, Heather was able to finish the articles and get them posted.

Tomorrow is a work day for Mark. I’m going with Heather, Jed, and boys to an Eco-friendly Toilet Fair being held at their local elementary school. The hope is that the boys will play on the playground with me while they take a serious look at the eco-friendly toilet options. Maybe I’ll even get to take a look. I’m quite interested in what they might be offering these days. We are actually not having a very eco-friendly time of it with our toilets on Windbird. The pump-out boat for holding tanks only comes to Eel Pond once every two weeks, but we were told they would come if we called. Well, we called, but two days later they haven’t arrived and they don’t work on weekends. Sure hope they can come on Monday. I don’t think we can “hold it” any longer!