Kidney Quest

The surgeon called me Monday afternoon and said, "I'm sitting here looking at your MRI and we've got a serious problem." I responded by asking "is the cancer worse than we thought?" She said, "Oh, no. Everything I can see here on your MRI looks great as far as that is concerned, but there is a note here that says there is no right kidney. Have you had your right kidney removed?" "Uh, Not that I know of..."

She went on to explain that the MRI only catches the top part and that it could be sitting lower, I could have been positioned at a strange angle, who knows...but there was no right kidney and she wanted me to go for another ultrasound - that makes 4 now - to locate my right kidney. So they scheduled it today, on my birthday, and I joked about going on a quest to find my missing kidney.

I thought I'd walk in for 10 minutes and the ultrasound tech would find it immediately and say "oh yeah, it's right here." But why would it be that simple? After 30 minutes of looking, she switched to my left side and immediately found my left kidney. The radiologist looked at it and said I have an enlarged left kidney and ultrasound detected no kidney on the right side.

What? Are you kidding me? Have I been walking around my whole life with one kidney? How would you even know that if you've never had issues? When I had a kidney infection 10 years ago, is that why it only hurt on the left side? So the saga of my strange earth suit continues...

Perhaps I will have to do more procedures and imaging to try to locate my missing kidney. Perhaps I really do only have one. Either way, I think it is hysterical and I now have more material for my stand up comedy routine.