Day by Day

A mama blogs the journey to transplant and beyond...

Monday, March 02, 2009

VCUG And Biopsy Update

This time we did make it over the mountain, although there was a point in the journey, right as we crossed the pass near Donner Lake where I was having flash back from our previous attempt since there were snow showers. That morning Sage and woken up with a runny nose and Chris had been complaining for a few days of sore throat. When I picked Chris up from work that day we left he sounded awful. I was concerned about taking us all down there. I was feeling fine and Joaquin appeared fine but since the whole family wasn't healthy it did make me concerned especially since we would be around people whose children were also immuno-compromised like Joaquin. I know how I feel when I hear a kid cough even though most of the time once the symptoms appear the contagiousness has passed. But we pressed forward.

We arrived at the hotel in the late evening, we should have been there earlier but we were thisclose to being involved in a car accident in the freeway. It was a route we had never taken before where Chris thought we could avoid the tolls and wind up almost exactly in the place where our hotel was. Anyway, we witnessed a two car accident that took place right in front of us. It was scary but we were unharmed as well as our car. As we settle into our hotel room Joaquin starts in with a cough. He'd been having some nasal drainage so I thought maybe he was just clearing his throat but at the night when on it kept going.

In the morning the cough was not gone. We headed to the hospital since we had an 8:15 a.m. VCUG appointment scheduled. We were a little late getting there so we had to wait a little bit before Joaquin's name was called. The day before I had called the Child Life Specialists at our nurses' request in order to prepare Joaquin for the procedure. So before we did anything we went into this room with the CL lady and she pulled out all these toys that were small replicas of all the real equipment that would be used. Joaquin was vaguely interested. I think it prepared me more than him. I think it honestly made him a little nervous having it all spelled out for him and having everyone make a big deal out of it. The CL lady set up a Thomas the Train video for him to watch while they were doing the VCUG. Believe it or not he had never seen Thomas the Train so he was very interested and he stayed still for most of it but he did experience a little pain. The procedure itself only took about 10-15 minutes total. They cathed him and then filled up his bladder with a dye and took pictures with an x-ray machine. During the procedure the doctor did comment that there was a little reflux but I didn't ask any questions as we had a clinic appointment next so I would be able to ask more there.

After we were finished we had about an hour and a half before we had to be at our pre-biopsy clinic. We walked around the Stanford campus which is beautiful. We arrived at our clinic appointment and had a bit of a wait before we could be seen by our nurse. In mean time they gave Joaquin a little mask to wear since he was coughing. When we were seen by our nurse she said that she couldn't say for sure but that we would probably have to cancel the biopsy since he was coughing and they don't like to put kids under anestesia when they have any kind of upper respiratory stuff going on.

We ended up waiting to be seen for two hours! Towards the end we were all cranky and tired. But finally we did get to see Dr. Grimm who told us that the VCUG study showed a little reflux but not enough to do anything about. He thinks it has to do with Joaquin potty learning and just recognizing when he has to go to the bath room and learning to completely his bladder. Apparently the bladder only refluxes part way up the ureter so it doesn't even go into the kidney. Good news! Dr. Grimm also confirmed that we would not be doing the biopsy. He looked at Joaquin and said, "Hmmm, what would I do if he were my kid. No, I wouldn't do it." I agreed. I want Joaquin to be completely healthy so that everything has a better chance of going smoothly. So we left clinic, checked out of our hotel room and left for home.

So Joaquin is still fighting his cold which is largely in his chest. Chris has the same thing and Sage has a baby-version of the cold, which probably has to do with the fact that he's still breastfeeding and therefore has some of my antibodies. I had a little bit of a chest cold a while back but I seem to have escaped the big one that the boys are fighting. We are waiting for Joaquin to get better before we make the next appointment.

Sorry there are no pictures this time. I'll be sure to upload and post some soon.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Miss you guys; LUV you guys!

--Sarah

9:20 AM  

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