Today’s topic is introducing you to the team of doctors who helps us care for Leah. We are extremely fortunate to have such amazing doctors, nurses, professionals here in Minneapolis.
Hospital Campus: We go to Children’s Hospital of Minnesota for Leah’s care. When we go for her regular day of appointments, we start out at the hospital in the Radiology department. This is where she gets her head ultrasounds, and where the MRI and/or CT-scans will be. The hospital is just a few miles south of downtown in Minneapolis and takes us about 25-30 minutes to get there from our house. It’s in the middle of an urban neighborhood. If you recall, Leah was born at Abbott Northwestern, which is several blocks from Children’s and connected by an underground tunnel. In between the 2 hospitals are many medical buildings on a large medical campus.
Team Neuro: Dr. Nagib is our neurosurgeon. He is the one who performed Leah’s back surgery and placed her shunt. He also consults with us when we are concerned with her shunt and it’s ultimately his decision on whether we do a shunt surgery. His nurse practitioner is Pete, who we see for Leah’s regular neuro visits. When we have head ultrasounds, we then follow up with Pete, and only sometimes get to see Dr. Nagib. Pete reviews the results of the ultrasound with us and if he’s concerned, he’ll consult with Nagib. Pete sees a lot of other SB kids too, so he is very familiar with SB. The neuro team offices in a building right across the street from Children’s Hospital so we can just walk there after we have our ultrasounds.
Team Spina Bifida: Dr. Marker is our primary SB doctor. He has been a doctor for a looooong time, and his specialty is actually infectious disease. He got involved with SB because many of the conditions that come from having SB are treating and preventing infections – bladder, UTI, shunt – so his background fits very well. Dr. Marker is an old-school doctor, so he is on call 24/7 and will return our calls within minutes of having him paged. He and our neuro team consult with each other on their patients, so Marker and the neuro team of Pete and Nagib are fully aware of everything going on with Leah. Dr. Marker’s regular office is about 20 blocks from the hospital, so we drive there after meeting with the neuro team. He does have SB clinic on Tuesdays in a medical building next to Children’s, so we walk back across the street to see him when we go on Tuesdays.
Dr. Glasser is another doctor on team SB. He is the nephrologist, which is a doctor of the kidney and bladder. His primary concern with Leah today is keeping her kidneys healthy. We don’t always see Dr. Glasser, just after Leah has had any kind of renal ultrasound or bladder study, which is typically done every 2-3 visits. Once she gets to the age when we want to put together a bathroom management program, we’ll see him more often.
Dr. Privila is Leah’s eye doctor, who she sees twice a year. His main focus is to make sure her eyes stay healthy and don’t have any residual damage from her hydrocephalus.
Leah also has to see a regular pediatrician to make sure her immunizations are up to date and that she is meeting her development milestones, just like any regular child. Dr. Benson is her pediatrician, and though he’s not totally familiar with SB, he was strongly recommended to us by our NICU doctor when Leah was first born. She sees him for all of her well-baby check-ups.
Those are all the doctors she sees today. As she gets older, she'll start seeing a rehabilitation doctor, who will help Leah with her mobility, whether that's getting braces on her legs or in a stander. We could also see an orthopedic surgeon if she needs to have surgery on her legs. She also will need to see a urologist if there are surgeries she'll need for her bathroom management program. Those are things that are a few years away, though.
