Surgery #4

Leah will be having surgery #4 tomorrow morning.  First of all, please send extra prayers our way for our little girl and her surgical team.  This surgery is called a Left Ureteral Reimplantation.  

Since she was born, we have been watching her kidneys to keep them healthy.  They were looking really good until about a year ago.  We started noticing that her bladder was refluxing urine into her kidney.  We started an intermittent catheterizing program earlier this year, and right away it looked like the reflux was going away.  Yay!

However, in August we saw that the reflux was back so she had more intensive tests done.  Those tests showed that her left kidney was slightly smaller than it had been in previous tests (it's supposed to be growing, so that wasn't good), and that there was a lot of reflux.  The test also showed that her left kidney is only doing 20% of the work and her right is doing 80% (it should be 50/50).  In short, her left kidney is being damaged, and we have to fix it so it doesn't get worse.  Her kidney likely won't get better so we can only prevent any further damage.

During the procedure, the surgeon takes the ureter, which is the tube going from the kidney into the bladder, and reimplants it into the bladder.  It will hopefully prevent any more urine from backing up.  Her surgeon said it has a 98% success rate, and that should stop the reflux.  The good news is that she is not currently in any pain, so this isn't affecting her in any way right now.  We also don't have to do anything different after her surgery except continue to monitor the kidneys.  She'll likely have to stay overnight in the hospital, maybe even 2 nights, but we'll decide what is best after the surgery.  We are much more comfortable at home so would prefer to come home earlier if she's doing well.

Please send us some extra prayers for Leah on surgery #4, for us, and for her surgeon, Dr. Vandersteen and everyone who will be taking care of her in the hospital.  Hopefully everything will go as planned and she'll have a quick recovery.  Hospital stays are hard for us, and will likely be even harder with a 5-year old.  She's anxious about it, and we've been talking about what it's like to be in the hospital and practicing what will happen.  There is some excitement about the promise of juice boxes, pudding and Jello-O!  I'll do what I can to update everyone here on our progress.  Children's Hospital blocks blogger, so I may have to wait until we're home to post anything new.  In any case, prayers and good thoughts are always welcome!