Surgery on Tuesday

When Lydia was 12 weeks old she and I both got sick. I thought we had the same thing, but her fever kept getting higher. Turns out I just had a bad cold but she had a urinary tract infection. Apparently that is pretty rare in such a young baby so it was a big red flag that something was wrong. She was quickly diagnosed with renal reflux, which means that urine is able to flow back up to her kidneys where it can cause infection. So, for a year and a half she has been on an antibiotic to kill the germs in the urine that is still flowing back into her kidneys. The worst thing has been that anytime she has a fever we have to assume that it might be kidney related and have a catheter ran to test for a UTI. It pretty much sucks. She has also had to have the test to look at her kidneys twice now, first when diagnosed and again at a year to check for any improvement. Think of it as the mother of all catheters, only they are injecting liquid into your baby's bladder while baby is strapped to a board, and while baby is tilted so gravity can make the liquid flow toward the kidneys, and all of this while baby is screaming hysterically, and while the nurses are discussing if she should have been sedated. So the test revealed that no improvement occurred in the last year and in my heart I can't bear the idea of another year of constant catheters and another round of that awful test. So the surgery has been scheduled for a while. I have been told that parents who have it done are very grateful afterword, but right now I can't get my mind off the 5-7 day recovery time or the idea of her needing pain medications or incision care post-op.

Oh, I guess I planned this post to show you all what we are having done. Basically they are laying the malfunctioning tube down into the muscle of Lydia's bladder so that gravity and pressure can help keep urine from flowing backwards. It's routine. The doctor has done thousands of them. He has a 100% success rate with this surgery. I know this needs to be done, and yet it is going to be hard to hand her over. I'm not sure what else to say. Think good thoughts for a smooth recovery for her and us.

That's all.

I should be in bed.

Long day tomorrow.