When are kidney stones a GOOD thing?

When they lead you to have a CT scan and something is found that may have otherwise have not been found until much later.  "Early" is a good thing.  Really.

So, yeah... last weekend wasn't one of my better weekends, but hey.. stuff happens, right?  When your urine looks like cranberry juice.. it's high time to go have it checked out.  Suspected kidney stone(s)... and off to the ER so I can be sent to radiology for a CT scan to confirm there is in fact stones and where they are.. and if they're obstructing anything.

Yep.  Two stones, they said.  One in the ureter (ouch!), and the other in the kidney and not moving thus far.  Drink a lot of water, take these drugs... and if things get worse come back.  Ok.

Things got worse, but not in the way you would think.  Back I went.  Saw two D.O.'s (love those docs)... and they think something AI is going on and that I should see a rheumatologist.  Okay.  Off I go to see yet another Dr.

A few days later I'm looking at the sheet they sent me home with from the hospital, the one from my CT scan.  The one that sat on my dining room table for about a week.  And there at the top of the list of findings was this....

ABDOMEN: Lung bases: No infiltrate of effusion.  A 1.1 cm nodule in postro basal segment of left lower lung.  Follow-up using Fleischner criteria suggested.

Top of the list of findings, and you guys didn't, you know, consider mentioning this? lol  Okay.  Well, the rheumatologist did.  "You need to have your primary care physician refer you to a pulmonologist. That nodule needs further investigation."

Well alrighty then.

I've been looking for another PC physician because the one I have, as I've discovered over the last year and a half, is more interested in writing prescriptions than actually helping.  He takes an eternity to refer me to specialists when needed, ignores symptoms for so long that I have to literally INSIST on getting a referral, and this... seems to be no exception.  I found a pulmonary doc I want to see and called my PC doc and made the request, explained why... and... have heard nothing back.  If I were already a patient I could have made the appt myself, so I was told by the receptionist.  But they require a referral.

Spoke to the receptionist at the pulmonologist's office and she was actually quite shocked that my dr hadn't bothered to call for a referral right away.  She is taking it upon herself to get my records sent over and try to do things from her end instead.  I like this clinic already.

And my primary doctor is... so fired.