Blogger Neglect

Yes I am guilty of a serious case of blogger neglect. No good excuses other than it takes two free hands to type this blog. I only usually have one good hand available because the other is velcroed to my son.

Kidneygate Update!

Back to Hershey we went two Mondays ago. Not for roller coaster rides and outsourced Mexican chocolate, but for a renal scan for our son. This kid has had to endure far more in his 10 months of life, than either Dave or I endured in our first twenty years. Strapped to a gurney, Nicholas had to have an IV and a urinary catheter. His next assignment was to lay, for what should have been a little over an hour, but what turned out to be two, thanks to a computer glitch. While radioactive dye, that comes direct via a little lead box, drips through his uro-genital tract. Nicholas endured this post modern version of reverse Chinese water torture when he was 3 months old and he actually slept through about 60% of it. I didn't expect my active 10 month old to sleep that amount this time and I was correct. This renal scan he may have slept, through sheer exhaustion, for about 20 minutes of the 2 hour ordeal.

After the procedure is all said and done, much relief pours over Dave and I regardless of the results. Luckily we have are scheduled to see the urologist a mere hour after the scan so there is not much of a wait. This time Dr Pediatric Urology Guy tells us the same thing we heard last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. " Your son's good kidney is not 100% normal." "So we need to watch it." "It may never change for the better, but that's OK because right now it functions at 100% and can this way his entire life. " But.....because he only has one functional kidney, we must continue to monitor with ultrasounds and maybe another renal scan sometime in the future...blah blah blah..."

This is a song Dave and I already had memorized and expected and sincerely hoped to hear. There is always a chance that is ureter could narrow, and he need surgical intervention, but we've been told the chances of this are less likely as he grows and everything, including ureters, gets bigger.

"So he can be this way, slightly hydronephrosed, for the rest of his life, and still function at 100%?" I asked.

"Yep."

OK that's all I needed to know, thanks......

Our next renal adventure will be heading to Children's Hospital Of Phila for Nicholas' follow up, thanks to Hershey being "out of network" now. Thank you big name insurance companies for keeping the cost of health care rising to the stratosphere with your greed and dishonestly (note the sarcasm here...)