After spending nearly 12 nights in hospital, Kevina O’Rourke readily admits she was driving her consultant “demented” with questions about when she could go home.
“Mentally, I wasn’t doing great. I got really upset and I just wanted to be at home with my children.”
When she had left Max, then aged 11, and Sadie (6) at home in Rathnew, Co Wicklow, last November, she expected to be away just two or three nights, for the removal of a kidney stone in St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin.
But O’Rourke (39) had been warned that surgery to remove the 2.5cm stone, which was encased in a 5cm cyst in her left kidney, was more complex than the norm. The size of the stone and unknown nature of the cyst meant a percutaneous nephrolithotomy procedure was required.
“This is where they puncture in through my back, puncture straight into the kidney, and they break it all down at source and remove it,” she explains. On Friday, November 7th last, this was completed successfully, under Prof Barry McGuire, within about three hours in theatre.
“It was when they woke me up in recovery, I knew something wasn’t right. I was in fairly extreme pain and I kept saying I feel like something is wrong with my lung.”
An X-ray done in the recovery room showed her left lung had partially collapsed.
Although O’Rourke’s post-op recollections are hazy, she says it took more than four hours for her to be stabilised and the pain brought under control before she could be moved to the urology ward. “I know my blood pressure was extremely low, my heart rate was extremely high, my temperature was spiking and there was just a lot of people around.”
H
Continue Reading on The Irish Times
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.