Good News

Today was Makinley's Seattle Children's Hospital appointment. She had to have her fourth VCUG and a follow-up with her urologist, Dr. Joyner. The point of all of this was to see if all the procedures and surgeries that Makinley has gone through for her kidney/bladder reflux issue worked. Her main surgery was 3 months ago on November 24th.

We got back to a room where they took her BP and temperature. Everything was perfect there. They also weighed and measured her. She is 42 pounds and 3'10" tall. We had to wait awhile but they had a T.V. with cartoons on so she really didn't mind.


For all of her VCUG's she has had some sedation. Basically they have to put a catheter in, empty her bladder completely, insert a liquid dye up through the catheter that slowly fills her bladder, fill her bladder until she freaks out, pull out the catheter, and then she has to pee while laying there. The whole time they are taking x-ray pictures of the whole process. The want to make sure fluid isn't going back up her ureters into her kidneys while her bladder is filling or while it's coming out. Needless to say Kinley does not approve of the catheter, the cleaning process before hand, or the pressure of an extremely full bladder. She was very happy when it was over and so was I.

Before they take her back for the procedure she is given her "happy" meds. At first you can't tell but then she starts to get silly.

And she gets sillier.

And then she is pretty much delirious and giggles over everything. I wish it worked like this through the actual procedure.

After she is done she is cleaned up and wheeled back to her room where she gets apple juice and animal crackers. She is obviously still under the influence here. Some of the things she says are hilarious.

About 4 hours later we are waiting for our appointment with Dr. Joyner. She passes the time with some coloring.

When we finally get into a room she then proceeds to decorate the dry erase board. Dr. Joyner was impressed. He also shared with us the news that we had been waiting for.....NO MORE REFLUX!!!!!!! I am so happy and relieved. It has been a long two years dealing with this. She has to take her meds every other day for two more weeks and then she is done hopefully forever. That will be nice. Makinley is very excited about that part. So unless we have some major issue happen between now and then we won't bring her back until January 2010. Almost a year break. At that appointment she will get her kidneys x-rayed so we can see if they are growing again. She had one kidney that had actually started to shrink so hopefully now that the reflux is fixed it will be able to grow and be healthy again. So it look like no more VCUG's too. Thank goodness.

After a very long day with horrible traffic and weather we had to stop on the way home to eat. Besides the juice and crackers Kinley hadn't eaten since last night. She said she was starving to death. Since we got such good news we stopped at Mongolian Grill on the way back so she could have some noodles and rice. She ate a ton. Then it was back on the nightmare freeway and finally home. I'm so glad that we made it and got good news. I feel very happy right now.