That's What Counts

It is so hard to keep a positive attitude sometimes. So hard. Joaquin developed another UTI Tuesday and was admitted to the Reno hospital. He was started on two antibiotics that are pretty strong while they waited for the urine culture to come back. Typically it takes about 72 hours but after about 48 hours preliminary results generally come back. Yesterday they figured out that it was the bacteria pseudomona. It's a pretty strong bugger and can be hard to kill. The next thing was to wait for the culture to finish culturing and find out what the sensitivities of the pseudomona was so that they could take him off of IV antibiotics and put him on an oral antibiotics.

The good news is that the antibiotics he has been receiving since Tuesday night were working because his fever went away and he didn't have any pain complaints. The good news is that after he was able to sleep more he wanted to eat again and play. The good news is that his kidney appears to be happy and "normal" according to ultrasound results as well as blood tests. The good news is that he's in good spirits.

The bad news is that the type of bacteria is not sensitive to any oral form of antibiotics. So the bad news is that he may need to be hospitalized for up to 14 days total (including the three days he's already spent - so about another 10 tops).

Why does it always seem like the bad news outweighs the good?

We were supposed to go down for a repeat biopsy at the end of the month. Now it looks like that will be pushed back. I'm okay with that.

As far as what is causing the repeat UTI's - we're still theorizing as to why they keep coming back. The big one is that he is in the midst of potty learning and therefore learning to hold his bladder. Perhaps it's that he is not fully emptying his bladder. The other cause could be that he is not circumcized and that the foreskin is too tight. It may be that we have not been able to give it the proper cleaning. There are options to consider and try out before they would actually fully circumcize him. If I were to know that he would stop getting the UTI's then I would seriously consider a circumcision. I question whether or not it was smart of me to hold on so tightly to my beliefs against circumcision but I think that they were perhaps right and that the way he was treated as an intact littly boy may have compromised his genital integrity, leaving him vulnerable to more UTI's.

Some options in order to loosen the foreskin would be to apply hydrocortisone creme to foreskin surrounded the tip of the penis to thin the skin. Another option would be to do a dorsal flip, which from my understanding would require making a cut in the foreskin. The last resort would be a full circumcision.

So the good news is that he's in great spirits. The good news is that he's playing in the playroom right now. The good news is that he's getting better and he'll be out of here as soon as possible. The good news is that his kidney is happy right now.That's what counts, right? Right.