Catching Up - June and the babies are 4 months!

September 23, 2016

Catching Up - June and the babies are 4 months!

June brought our first two big medical events as parents. We had Max's MRI to assess his tethered spinal cord as well as some kidney work-ups on Mia due to her UTI. For Mia we did a renal ultrasound followed by a VCUG test. Through those tests we determined that she has reflux back up into her kidney's from her bladder. This is particularly concerning as there is a history of kidney disease with my mom as she had an issue with a kink in her ureter which caused reflux back into her kidney, eventually rendering it useless and it had to be removed. This is a similar situation for what they have discovered with Mia but as of yet we are not ready to pursue aggressive treatment. For now she will have renal ultrasounds and VCUG tests every 6 months and we will monitor the progress as the doctor said it's something that she may eventually outgrow. At some point we will have to make the determination - if we don't see her outgrow it - to surgically correct it. She also is on preventative antibiotics every day and will be for at least 18 months - likely longer. Any fever that she gets now is an automatic trip to the ER and should be assumed to be a UTI. Each UTI she gets could cause damage to her kidneys so we have to be extremely careful. It's a little nervewracking to say the least!

As for Max - we had his MRI under sedation at the beginning of June. Anytime your child has to go under sedation it's very scary and this was our first experience. As you can imagine - turning him over to the team - even though he's at one of the top children's hospitals in the country - was very scary. Luckily he came out just fine - albeit grumpy with super chemically smelly breath when he woke! we didn't get the answer we were hoping for and about 2 days later the doc called to tell us that she did indeed believe his spinal cord was tethered. That is a post in and of itself that I promise to write and update on this soon!

So all the medical stuff is totally new to us and has given us a whole new perspective on how lucky we are that Casey has been relatively healthy save for a few ear infections. If you have happy, healthy and thriving kids thank your lucky stars everyday - it's a pure blessing.