Saturday 4th May 2019:

I managed another short run yesterday morning, interspersed with some walking, with Sophie, Ruth and Ness the dog. But now I feel like I’m peeing razor blades.

I called the GP surgery on Thursday and the nurse practitioner prescribed yet more antibiotics for what is now my 8th UTI. She also advised I book another appointment with my GP to see about the possibility of going on a lower dose of antibiotics over a much longer period of time.

She then reiterated my kidney and urinary tract scan a week ago was “normal”, except my left kidney is slightly larger than my right. I’ve been told this before in recent years as this isn’t the first stretch of recurrent infections and lower back pain I’ve had.

By Friday morning I was in absolute agony…almost as bad as childbirth but without the reward, unless you count the cloudy, pungent, spit spots of wee.

Suffice to say I ended up in A&E…twice.

The doctor looked back at my ultrasound and then had the nous to revisit the CT scan I had the night of my heart attack. “It doesn’t quite go down low enough for me to see them more clearly but it looks like you’ve got stones in your left kidney and your bladder,” he said. I questioned why this hadn’t been picked up at the time. “I think they had much more important things to worry about,” he replied.

It seems my helpful body is now trying to pass the stones so I’ve been given an emergency CT appointment to check them out properly this morning and have also been referred for an urgent urology appointment, which frankly beggars the question why I have never been sent for either before.

I was also told to read up about kidney stones on the NHS website. I got as far as reading about calcium stones and the fact they can be caused by “a rare condition called sarcoidosis” before I had all I needed.

I think I must have been Genghis Khan in a past life! Now where’s that hot water bottle my buddy Birdie lent me?…I left mine in the cinema after the last bout!