Family Alive

Josiah had yet another follow-up visit at Children’s South with his pediatric urologist today for his annual tests to track his vesico-urethral reflux (VUR).  All my good info links (and a cute baby Josiah pic!) are on the original post from when he was just a couple months old.  Short story – urine from his bladder backs up his urethra to his kidneys, which can could cause kidney damage.  Amazingly it was diagnosed before he ever had an infection, and he’s been infection-free thanks to prophylactic daily antibiotics since he was a baby.  We do have to get every fever over 101.5 checked out with a doctor, but he’s been SUPER healthy for the past year.

The tests seem more difficult now that he’s older and can understand and fight against them somewhat.  It’s surely hard for this mother’s heart!  I can’t even imagine how other parents manage chronic illnesses with their children.  Anyway, we’ve done this each year since he was a baby, so we’ve come to know how it goes.  Funny moment at the end of the VCUG test… they have to fill his bladder with contrast dye through a catheter (that was the hard part), and then they take xrays to get pictures of the bladder/ureters/kidneys.  After the pics are done, he has to pee out all the contrast media, under the xray machine so they know that it’s all out.   So we finally convinced him to pee, and he peed and peed and peed (into a towel).  “That’s a wotta pee!” he said,  exactly what we were thinking!  His little iron bladder had held an entire bottle of contrast liquid, and so it was one seriously long pee to empty his bladder!

After the VCUG and ultrasound, we met with the doctor.  His reflux has improved from grade 3/4 to grade 2.  It looks like he’s slowly outgrowing this problem.  We’ll continue with the antibiotics, pray he continues to stay infection free, have one LAST VCUG test next year (hooray!!!), follow his kidneys on ultrasound 2x a year, and hopefully be done with antibiotics at age 5.   That’s the plan anyway…