A little surgery news

Caity's kidney surgery has been put on hold. Not sure when it will happen, but for now its put off indefinitely.

We met with the urologist today who after viewing all of her test results and conferring with another urology specialist, decided that with the bladder issues, teh kidney surgery would only have a small chance of being successful. Not worth cutting her open for.

So We will start with treating the bladder issues. Yes. Issues. Plural. Can you hear my excitement at finding that out.

It seems our little Caity is a very complete medical anomaly. Very very rare case is she.

So the battle plan.

For the next 3-4 weeks we will be giving her Flomax (Yes, the prostate drug) every night along with her current medicine regimen. If she does not tolerate this well, we will try lowering the dosage. After that time period,if she's been able to handle the meds, we will take her in for a repeat uroflow test and see if there is any improvement. If there is improvement, we will add Ditripan to the drug cocktail. If there is no improvement we will increase the Flowmax and go from there.

Dr. R said:
Best Case scenerio : The drugs work, help with the kidney issues as a side effect and we are good with the bladder. It will never be normal, but we can make it better.

Worst Case scenerio: The drugs don't work, and she has to be on Ditripan for life and cath herself several times daily.

Onto the Kidneys

Right Kidney -- Beautiful. Perfect. Right size. Right shape. Right everything. Healthy, normal kidney.

Left Kidney -- reflux, grade 5. smaller than normal. Showing signs of heavy damage.

But hey --- You only need one working kidney to live. So she's got that going for her.



Of course all of this means extra special attention on her kidneys to make sure they are tolerating the treatment well and the bladder is not causing further damage to the left and creating problems in the right (a possibility). So yay more time for us to spend at Children's Hospital, cuz you know, its one of our fave places.


There is so much more to add to this, but I'm exhausted and upset and I just really don't have the notion to spill it all out there right now. Look for another update sometime this week.