when to go home

My plans to stay at the hospital ended after one month when I woke up one morning and had LOTS of blood in my urine. That would be disconcerting anywhere but it will really rock your world when you are in Biharamulo. As much as I  love my co workers in the hospital I really do not ever want to be sick or worse, wake up finding my self a patient in this hospital. After doing doing my own lab work ( urinalysis,  gram stain, malaria testing) I was pretty sure I did not have an infection, malaria
some weird tropical disease or kidney stones. If your in your 60's and you have painless hematuria the list of possibilities goes downhill rapidly from there. I kept working because I felt fine. The next day I did a an ultrasound ( on myself) of my kidneys and bladder, with the really neat portable ultrasound machine I brought here this year courtesy of The Sonosite Company ( part of Fujifilm). I am not a radiologist or a ultrasound tech but this machine is pretty awesome....you can see everything. The good news was what I didn't see. No bladder tumor and as best as I could tell I had 2 normal sized kidneys. When you examine yourself you have to be 1) gutsy and 2) be
aware of the power of denial...I had to deny denial...and be as objective as I could. Fact is bladder cancer was 1st on my list. So I felt better after that but that did not stop the bleeding and just raised further doubts about how good I am with an ultrasound machine. Your not suppose to do this stuff on yourself !! I deducted, guessed that I must be bleeding from one of my kidneys. That was not a fun realization and just raised the bar that this was now over my head. As much as I hated it I had to get a CT scan and see a urologist. I was now bleeding for 4 days with no slowing down. There are urologists in Mwanza, the big city six hours away but was freaking out....I had to go home.
 Just to cut to the quick. I have now had a million dollar workup at my home hospital, Maine Medical Center and I am not going to die. No one knows why I am bleeding but there is nothing bad in there....as best as we know. Good news I think its over. I don't see any more blood. Bottom line, I bleed for 3 weeks from my left kidney and while there is no obvious reason, we are pretty sure it is a benign process.