I've wanted so much to sit down and write about all that's happened this week and all my feelings about it, but I just haven't had much time. So, finally, here's the medical saga.

The day after we got home, Christian started feeling generally unwell. That evening (Friday) he took his temperature and found it to be around 103 F. We assumed he had caught something from the plane. I myself was having a bad headache, sore throat, and was sneezing a lot. We both went to bed and slept for a long time. When we woke up, I noticed that his urine was red. (I suppose I'm getting prepared to be a mother, as I noticed when he didn't.) I was kind of freaked out and insisted that we go see someone. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, the emergency room was the only place to go. He protested somewhat, but acquiesced surprisingly quickly.

We spent about six hours in the emergency room where poor Christian was pricked 15 times and subjected to a CAT scan, telling me he wanted to go home the whole time. They didn't find anything. There were no signs of infection or any other problem anywhere: no bacteria in his urine or blood, no elevated white blood cell count, no pain other than the normal pain of fever, no stones or inflammation on the CAT scan. Indeed, the only sign that something was wrong was the red urine, which, if anything, got darker as things progressed, and elevated creatinine levels, which indicated that something might be wrong with the kidneys. After the six hours they told us that they thought the fever and the blood in the urine were unconnected, and told us to go to urgent care tomorrow for another kidney function test, the results of which would determine whether he should be hospitalized.

We went home. Christian went to bed. I had a stress-induced binge. We had a fight in the wee hours of the morning as to whether he would actually go in to get the test in the morning. He didn't want to go to the hospital. I thought we needed to find out what was going on, especially after a discussion we had had with an urologist during the ER visit in which we connected an incident a few months earlier in which he had gotten a fever and then started peeing brown. The urologist said that that was probably blood too, it was just old blood.

I woke up to a phone call around noon. He had decided to go in without waking me, and they had decided to put him in the hospital. His creatinine level was slightly higher than it had been the night before.

The hospital was not at all fun. They put an IV in to give him a dose of antibiotics and to try to pump more fluids through his kidneys to flush them out. Of course, Christian was drinking about a half liter of water per hour, and the IV was only putting in 80 milliliters per hour, but they wouldn't take it out. Eventually he had a panic attack about it, and they finally relented. After that he proceeded to try to get some sleep, which of course was impossible since someone came in to take his blood pressure or something every 45 minutes.

Of course the worst part about it was the fact that we didn't find out anything until right before they let him out the next afternoon. Teams of doctors, residents, and students paraded through, asked the same questions over and over, and said fifteen different inconclusive things. On Sunday, a team of kidney doctors started talking about kidney biopsies and totally freaked Christian out. When I got there right afterwards, he was dressed, packed, and ready to leave.

Finally a nice older gentlemen that was also in the kidney department came down to talk to us. He was the first person to actually come up with a diagnosis. He told us it was IgA Nephropathy, also known as Berger's Disease. He told us a little bit about it, and then said we could go home, but should come back the next day to check on the kidney function again. He also said they'll have to do a kidney biopsy at some point to confirm the diagnosis.

So we went home to look it up and read a little bit about it. Turns out it's "A kidney disorder characterized by blood in the urine; caused by inflammation of the internal kidney structures and deposits of IgA antibodies in the kidney mesangial tissue." It's "usually discovered after one or more episodes of dark or bloody urine in a person with no other symptoms of kidney disorder. Bloody urine may begin during or soon after a respiratory infection." As I read that particular part, I'm wondering why someone didn't think of it earlier? They were looking very hard for signs of infection in the kidneys or bladder, and everyone was asking him over and over if they were sure he didn't feel any kidney pain. You'd think after he had assured them over and over that he didn't, that they would have mentioned something about this. But apparently at the teaching hospitals where they send in the lowest ranking people first, they are at a loss if someone comes in with blood in the urine and doesn't have kidney stones or a bladder or kidney infection.

Then comes the bad news. There's not really any treatment, beyond controlling the symptoms of high blood pressure and swelling. He has a 25% chance of renal failure occurring sometime in the next 10-25 years. It's a constantly progressive disease, but at least it's generally a slowly progressing disease. And at least it's not fatal. There are things they can do for kidney failure, transplants and dialysis. So it's not the worst thing that it could be. But it's still pretty bad.

I don't think words can express the emotions we're both feeling. He's afraid of dying, of declining quality of life, of, more immediately, the kidney biopsy. I'm afraid of him dying, of whether I'll be able to handle the role of supportive spouse, of not being able to do anything to make it better.

As if to add to the stress, his creatinine levels still haven't dropped. We don't know if this is because the kidney is still not functioning normally because of this particular flare up, or if there has been enough permanent kidney damage to cause the levels to be this high constantly.

Since this happened right on the heels of our return from our honeymoon, it's created a weird sort of discontinuity. We had all of a day or two to try and go from happy vacationing to normal working, before we went straight to shell-shocked disbelief. Unfortunately that has reduced some of the residual pleasure from a wonderful vacation I'm sure I'd normally be feeling. I haven't even wanted to look at the pictures for fear that I'll taint some wonderful memories with all of this other garbage. I'm sure though, that once things have calmed down and the idea of it all has begun to sink in, I'll be able to remember it pleasantly. I just don't know how long it's going to take to get used to this. One of the friends I talked to about it could only say "Wow" in response, and that's about all I can muster to sum it up.

Wow.