Claire's Radiology Appointment

Clairey and I were at the hospital this morning at 8:30 and were seen by the ultrasound tech right away. Claire has developed an aversion to anyone in scrubs and she made that perfectly clear to everyone on the first floor of the hospital. She was awfully upset about the ultrasound...and that was the easy part.

Afterwards, we went straight into Radiology for her VCUG. They inserted a catheter, collected a urine sample, and filled her bladder with dye. Claire was in hysterics the entire time. I was able to hold Clairey's hands and watch the image of her bladder on the X-Ray screen. The radiologist explained everything I was looking at. Apparently Clairey has a huge bladder! We didn't see any of the dye leaking from her bladder until she started to urinate (the wait felt like an eternity).

The doctor told me that Claire has 2nd grade (4th grade being the worst) reflux on her left side. This means the dye left her bladder and traveled all the way up to her kidney. We couldn't see, definitively, if their was leakage on her right side, but if there was, it would only be 1st grade, as it didn't make it to her kidney.

The reason Claire's UTI resulted in a fever and shaking was because the infected urine traveled from her bladder into her kidneys and caused infection there. Over time, this can cause scarring on the kidneys and prevent further kidney growth. Bad news. The good news is we have our information now and we can start moving forward in our treatment. It will be up to our pediatrician to decide whether we see a urologist next or not. The radiologist believes, based on Claire's level of severity (and her own daughter's reflux), we're probably looking at giving her low doses of antibiotics everyday to keep her urine sterile (to prevent any more kidney infections). After about a year, they will probably do another ultrasound and VCUG to see if the reflux has cleared up on it's own. If not, we may be looking at other treatment options, including surgery (I was assured that there are some minimally invasive procedures).

Something interesting... Vesicoureteral Reflux is hereditary. All my life I've been told about the time I was hospitalized for a bladder infection at four months of age. That was the beginning and end of the story. They didn't perform the same investigative procedures then, as they do now. My mother struggled with significant kidney infections as a child and as our pediatrician noted, a person can live just fine without ever knowing their kidneys are damaged... Until they learn the hard way. Andy is also at risk for reflux. The results of Claire's tests today will no doubt raise questions with each of our own doctors in the future. Clairey may very well be leading us towards discovering our own medical histories.

Our sweet baby girl continues to take one for every team. I feel indebted to her in so many ways.