And how was your weekend?

I hadn't planned on doing much this weekend, but this isn't what I had in mind.

(Warning: Talk of bodily functions ahead.)

I'm lying on the couch Friday, watching the end of the evening news when I started to feel a discomfort in my left abdomen. By the time Bob Schieffer had signed off, it had built up into a sharp, stabbing pain. I shoved the dog off me and walked around the living room a bit. I tried to go to the bathroom. Nothing. The pain was getting worse. I went and told mom. She put in a call to the oncology center's hotline and talked to a nurse. She suggested going to the ER. So off we went.

We got there about 7 p.m., so I had been in pretty bad pain for about an hour. Of course, it was quite awhile before I got to see the doctor. He asked all the usual questions and questions about my cancer and chemo, they took some blood and even though I didn't feel like I could, I squeezed out enough urine for a sample.

So Mom and I waited and waited some more, and the nurse popped in once in awhile to let us know what was going on. I think there might have been an accident victim or two brought in while I was there, and I don't know that there was more than one doctor in the ER, so it was quite a wait. I did get a little morphine, so at least the pain died down.

Finally, the doctor comes in the exam room and asks Mom if she could step out for a minute, there were some other exams he needed to do. Oh, great, I thought. Does this mean getting undressed from the waist down?

"The reason I asked you mother to leave is I don't like to embarrass people in front of their parents," he started. "Your pregnancy test came up positive."

WHAT?!?! "Uh, yeah that can't be right," I stammered. Really. I mean, add it up: I've had cancer, I'm going through chemo, I'm almost bald and my mother lives with me. What are you think the odds are I'm even THINKING of doing anything like that?

I explained to him that it just couldn't be possible. "Although," I added, "it IS Christmas." At least I gave him a good laugh for the night.

He'd already called my oncologist, who said the positive result could be from the Herceptin, although she'd never heard of it happening. It seems the drug is made from hamster ovaries. A year of Herceptin treatment can cost upwards of $48,000. That's a lot of hamsters.

They arranged to have a sonogram done of my ovaries and uterus to double check, even though I told them there's NO WAY, but they wanted to also check and make sure there wasn't a cyst or something in there. I won't go into details about the sonogram. If you're female, you probably know why. Let's just say the device she was using looked like something out of a bad porno movie.

My oncologist came in while that was being done and watched for a bit. She did not look happy. She left after a few minutes and it sounded like she was talking to someone, maybe on her cell phone. When the sonogram was finished, she said she needed to talk to me before they took me back to the ER.

"I thought I was going to have to have a very serious talk with you," she said.

No kidding. I was ready to have a very serious talk with God. Y'know, where was the heavenly spotlight and booming voice? Shouldn't I at least get that?

"But it looks like that's not necessary." A second pregnancy test and the sonogram told them what I'd been saying all along. OK, God, you're off the hook.

So that scare over, I headed back to the ER, waited some more, then got a CT scan of my stomach area. Finally the results came in on that -- nearly four hours after we first got to the ER -- I had a kidney stone, four mm. They admitted me right away, and after seeing that I was settled in, Mom took off for home. It had started snowing by then, enough that I could see from my room window the parking lot was covered.

They set me up with an IV for fluids and I think I got more morphine. I didn't think I would sleep too easily, but I actually fell asleep pretty quick and never heard the night nurse coming in to check on me. As she was getting me all set up, we talked about Mexican food. She had an aunt from Mexico that her family visits every year in El Paso, and she said they all cooked up a bunch of food and everyone would take some home. I told her how when I was born and we lived in New Mexico, our neighbor lady was from Mexico and taught Mom how to make some stuff. Which is why I don't call it "chili soup."

I didn't wake up at all until 5 a.m. Saturday. And that's about all I did all day Saturday. Sleep. Call for help to pee. It wasn't so much I needed help, but I had to pee in the thing they call a hat (why? You don't put it on your head, for god's sake) and the nurses then had to strain it to see if I passed the stone. I did need help a couple times, because the morphine made me nauseous and after getting up shortly before lunch I did throw up. Then the nurse brought lunch awhile later and the first smell of the broccoli stuff just set my stomach quivering. The IV machine started beeping about then, so I hit the call button for the nurse, and pretty much as soon as she stepped in the room -- blaaaarf -- there went the cheese and crackers and chocolate pudding I'd had earlier in the morning. I think I got one bite of the beef stew. It was a shame, too because that chocolate cake looked really good. And I hadn't really eaten anything since about 5 p.m. the night before, and all that was was popcorn, apples and cheese and a Cherry Coke. I think some of that was in the bucket, too.

Mom and Dad missed the show literally by just minutes. I'm surprised they couldn't hear me ralphing when they got off the elevator, it was that close. They stayed with me for probably a couple hours, although I certainly wasn't much of a conversationalist. I think I slept most of the time they were there. It had been snowing all through night, and I know they were concerned about the roads, so I told them they didn't have to stay long on my account. It was kind of lonely the rest of the day and the night, but Mom brought me a picture of Nipper, just like I'd done for her when she had her hospital stays.

The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful. I got some anti-nausea drugs, so I was able to eat some dinner and had breakfast this morning. I was woken up for an X-ray at 6 a.m. (they brought the machine to my room). The urologist came in again (we visited some Saturday) and said the stone hadn't moved at all since Friday night, and since I hadn't had any pain (not much, at least) since later Saturday afternoon, I could go home. I go back Wednesday to have it zapped with sound waves (apparently that's the only day they have that machine here), so as long as I don't have the intense pain come back and take it easy, I should be OK. I have to strain my own pee now, in case I do pass it. I won't tell you how much fun that is.

I'm going to try going to work tomorrow, since I just really do desk work, and my Herceptin chemo should still be scheduled for Tuesday. The week after that, I start on a new drug (whose name I don't remember at the moment) to replace the Taxotere that I had the reaction to a couple weeks ago. This one, though, doesn't cause hair loss! The doc said it might not grow more while I'm on, but I won't lose what I have. Hmmm ... this might be the time to try some wacky colors.

I guess if one good thing can be found in all this, it's that it didn't happen NEXT weekend.

Well, hope everyone had a better weekend than mine.

Later