it started days ago as a sharp pain on my lower left abdomen, i tried to ignore the pain until one time it woke me up from sleep.  i had a medical consult last friday fom an internist from one of the local hospital near our place. she assessed and took my medical history and i told her that i had kidney stones – she gave me anti-spasmodics to relieve the pain and requested blood work, urine and a k-u-b ultrasound. i have been on the same situation before years ago, so i already knew.  when my lab results were done i checked it myself, my creatinine was normal and my ultrasound read like this:

kidneys:

the right kidney measures 10.4 x 4.6 cm with cortical thickness of 1.0 cm with non-shadowing echogenic focus at the mid cortex.

the left kidney measures 10.6 x 5.7 cm with cortical thickness of 1.6 cm with shadowing echogenicity at the upper 3rd measuring 0.3 cm.

no hydronephrosis noted.

impression : nephrocalcinosis, right.  nephrolithiasis, left.

nephrocalcinosis is a disorder in which there is excess calcium deposited in the kidneys.  nephrolithiasis on the ther hand is the condition of having kidney stones.

i then consulted with a urologist, he prescribed me a number of medicines to take saying we do first the “conservative approach”.  he also scheduled me for a ct scan (stonogram) just to make sure if more stones are present which were not visible in the ultrasound.

they say if you’re a stone former, it cannot be eradicated in your system.  obviously, the not-so-friendly stones are back again to haunt me.

pictured is ram (david), our rig room boy and patrick (goliath), a service supervisor from halliburton.

my co-worker approached me earlier as i was at my office desk to ask me on something about the banking details information form that our personnel department sent us to fill up.  i explained to him to make sure that the information is precisely correct like the names on the account and our conversation started out like this:

“you have to make sure that you put in your name and your wife’s if it is a joint account – like, it’ll be for example ‘francis and/or ofelia mendoza’.”

his face was in shock as i mentioned the woman’s name.

“how do you know ‘ofelia’?”  he said.

“i don’t, i just thought of a female name out of nowhere . . . why?”  i gave him a puzzled look.

“she was my girlfriend when i was working in a textile factory in taiwan, she’s from marinduque.”  he added.

“oh, really?!  what a concidence!”  i blurted out.  “well, where is she now?”

francis said: “she’s been dead for four years, and it’s no joke.”

i shivered as i heard that.  out of thousands of female names – how did i thought of her name?