Medical Week, Vesicoureteral Reflux, Embarrassing Moments, Crappy Weekend, Trouble

Wow last week we really took advantage of our health insurance!!  Monday started out with Daniel having a follow up appointment with the allergist.  Even though he has graduated the milk allergy the doctor still wants to keep tabs on him as well as help manage his other allergies and asthma.  That follow up appointment was last Monday.  Daniel is doing great.  Even though it is sad to see summer end, it is nice to cut back on Daniel's daily medicine because of it.  Since the allergens in the air settle down after October Daniel can decrease his preventive inhaler to once a day and eliminate the daily Zyrtec pill.  Wahoo!!  He still gets to keep taking his Singulair, but that's OK.  The bad thing was he had to go and get labs drawn later in the week which Daniel was not happy about.  It was exciting last Friday.  Daniel was invited to a birthday party and he could just go with a present.  I didn't have to send him with any special foods because he could eat the pizza and cake they had.  Getting him over this milk allergy has been so freeing and awesome!!

Tuesday it was Sarah's turn.  Since Sarah had been getting a few urinary tract infections (4 in the last four months) her doctor wanted her to get checked out by a pediatric Urologist.  They set up the appointment for us down at Primary Children's Hospital for last Tuesday.  Before her actual appointment they wanted to do some imaging to see how everything looked.  She started out by getting an abdominal ultrasound of her kidneys, ureters and bladder to see how they looked.  Sarah didn't care too much because it was pretty similar to her echocardiogram she had gotten earlier in the year with the gel and ultrasound machine:

After that she went down the hall and had a test called a VCUG which stands for Voiding Cystourethrogram.  What they basically did was put a catheter up in her bladder and filled it full of contrast fluid and take a bunch of X-ray pictures of her kidneys, ureters, and bladder.  They then let her go potty into a bedpan and took consecutive X-rays of  her bladder, ureters and kidneys as her bladder was emptying to see where the contrast material went.  Sarah did not like this at all, but she did great.  I can't blame her I would've had major issues with that test, too, had it been me--poor thing!  The bad thing was after she went potty the first time the catheter fell out.  They wanted to do a second round of pictures, but that meant they would have to catheterize her again.  Boo!  Luckily, the radiologist came in and said the first round of X-ray pictures were good enough and not to catheterize her again.  Thank goodness!  After she got dressed we had about 90 minutes until her appointment with the urologist.  We grabbed some lunch to kill some time.  Sarah was excited I let her choose anything she wanted.  She chose some stuffed shells and some macaroni and cheese.  She loved it and she also was a fun lunch date despite the awful test she had just gone through. 

 After walking around for a bit when lunch was over it was time for her appointment.

 The urologist told us about her tests.  She has grade 2 vesicoureteral reflux.  What this means is that her valve in her bladder that stops the urine from back flowing back up her to kidney on her left side is not working.  That is not good.  It is really not good because every time she gets a urinary tract infection it spreads the infected urine up into her kidney which causes a kidney infection.  Every time her kidney gets infected it causes scarring and damage which can lead to bigger problems.  Here's what the VCUG test showed:

(This isn't her picture, but hers looked really similar to this picture.)  The black ball is her bladder full of contrast dye.  As she is going potty her urine is refluxing, or being forced back up through the ureter back up inside her kidney on the left side.  That's what that black line of dye is.  At the top of the line of dye you can see it branch out inside the first part of her kidney.  Luckily, it is only on the left side.  This problem is usually found during infancy or when they are toddlers.  I have know idea why this didn't get caught in Sarah until now.  She did have a few urinary tract infections as a baby, but nothing too bad.   Most kids will outgrow this condition by age 5-6.  Since Sarah hasn't outgrown it yet, we have to keep following up with the urologist.  They also started her on low dose antibiotic therapy that she has to take daily for the next year.  If she doesn't outgrow it by age 9 or if she keeps getting infections they will have to do surgery.  Our next appointment is in 4 months and she gets to have an ultrasound of her kidneys, ureters, and bladder before we go in.  Luckily, we don't have to do the VCUG or catheter test again for another year, but Sarah will need that test a few more times before we are done with this whole thing--poor thing.  It really is an awful test.  Another finding they did see on the ultrasound and VCUG was that her intestines were pretty full of stool.  Now being constipated can aggravate the urinary tract infection problems so the urologist told us we would have to do a bowel clean out on Sarah over the weekend.  Let me just say that was so not fun.  We all had a pretty 'crappy' weekend especially Sarah--and, yes, the pun was intended.  Anyway, I was glad when it was time to come home.  Spending the whole day at the hospital is not my idea of a good time.  When we got home it was just in time to head over to the kids' elementary school for their flu shot clinic.  Poor Sarah had to get poked and prodded that whole day, but she was still a good sport.

 Noah, on the other hand, HATED the shot and cried about it the whole time we were at the school, the whole way home and for about another 30 minutes after we got home.  Poor guy:

 Daniel was a good sport about it this year, which was really surprising.  Last year it took Aaron and me to hold and very wiggly, screaming Daniel down for him to get the shot.  This year Daniel just whimpered, but let them give the shot without a fight.

 After the shot clinic it was time for Noah and Sarah's very last makeup soccer game.  Noah was glad to be done as you can see:  (Aaron's face looked just as excited to be done with soccer, too.)

 Since Josh's games finished last week I was able to come and watch Sarah and Noah's game this time.  I sat next to another kids mom who was on Noah's team.  She kept telling me how fun it was to watch Noah.  Since I wasn't at his games because Josh's games were at the same time at a different park and Aaron was up trying to coach Noah's team, she snapped some funny pictures of Noah 'playing' soccer.  I don't think Noah's definition of playing soccer was anyone else's definition, though as you can see.  Noah is in the middle of the field lounging about while he's supposed to be up trying to defend his side.

 He'd just watch as the ball and crowd of kids would run by him.  I'm thinking that soccer might not be Noah's thing....

 However, since I was able to be at this last game Noah hammed it up for the camera before he got knocked down by another player.  He's the super cheesy, smiley boy wearing jersey #3.  What a crazy kid!

The next day it time to get Daniel's labs drawn.  When he found out that he was getting his blood drawn he was NOT happy:

 He fought the phlebotomists quite fiercely.  It took three people to hold him down in order to get the 6 vials drawn.  He fought so much that his vein blew after the first three vials which meant they had to stick him again in his other arm.  Oh there was so much wailing and gnashing of teeth!  Afterward he walked around like this for a few hours refusing to bend his elbows because it just hurt too bad.

  As you can tell Daniel is a bit of a drama king.  However, I'm glad we have that blood draw out of the way for another year!

Sarah has been working on wiggling her front tooth loose.  Aaron finally helped her get it out last night just in time for school pictures today.  She looks so big with her big gap in her front teeth.  The Tooth Fairy even remembered to come which is amazing!

We did have a ward activity this past Saturday.  It was a chili cook off.  Aaron signed me up to bring two different chilies a few weeks ago.  That was before we knew we were going to have a bowel cleanse to do on Sarah which included a bunch of Ex-Lax and Mirilax.  Anyway, since Aaron is one of the leaders he had to go to the activity so that meant I had to stay home with Sarah because she couldn't be too far from a bathroom.  Aaron took the three older boys.  They were only gone for two hours, but I guess it was an interesting two hours.  All my boys love chili Aaron included.  They were in heaven getting to sample some of the 24 entrees.  However, after eating all that chili Matthew came to Aaron and said he needed to go to the bathroom.  Aaron let him go by himself.  Aaron didn't think much about it until a bishopric member came over and said he needed to talk to Aaron about Matthew.  Uh oh.  I guess Matthew had clogged one of the church toilets and instead of coming to tell Aaron, he sought out a member of the bishopric to let them know about it.  I guess Matthew was just following his own chain of command for problems that, for some reason, didn't include Aaron.  Anyway, after telling the bishopric member Matthew then asked if he should go and tell the high councilman about it because he thought it was that urgent.  The bishopric member assured Matthew that he didn't need to tell the high councilman about it a few times, but Matthew is quite a determined kid.  That's when the bishopric member found Aaron and told him about it before Matthew told any more people he thought needed to know.  I sure hope the bishopric member was done eating at that point because that info would be an appetite killer for sure!  Anyway, Aaron went and took care of the problem and then tried to explain to Matthew about what and when was appropriate to use the priesthood chain of command and that a clogged toilet wasn't one of those times.  This kid definitely has his own mind!  Another interesting thing he did happened when he collected Fast Offerings Sunday morning.  He went to a member's house and as he walked in he said, "It smells good!  Are you making chili?"  They said they were.  Matthew then asked, "So what cooking method are you using?"  He can say the most random things, but he's trying to make small talk.  Luckily, most everyone he talks to is nice about it.

Speaking of Matthew he saw our neighbor outside and decided to go and make small talk with him.  I had no idea because I was inside the house doing homework with the other kids.  Before I knew it Matthew was running back inside waving around a new 2015 train calendar.  He was so excited.  Our train engineer neighbor gave the train calendar to Matthew and made his day.  He also gave him a Union Pacific catalog where you can order different Union Pacific merchandise.  Matthew's been in heaven looking at the catalog and calendar and Aaron and I now have a good idea of some Christmas presents :).

Last week I got a call from Matthew's afterschool program.  I HATE getting calls like that!  I guess Matthew was being a stinker and after so many warnings they told him he would have to go home.  They called me to make sure it was ok with me which it was.  That made him really upset.  His leader went to walk Matthew out to his car to come home and Matthew refused to go anywhere. He started throwing a tantrum and refused to go home early.  He got so upset they called me back to see if I had any pointers on how to get him home.  I told them all my usual moves, but none of them worked on Matthew.  His leader ended up getting his boss and the counselor involved in trying to get Matthew to calm down enough to come home.  They finally got him calmed down enough about the usual time it was for him to come home anyway.  The little stink still got his own way.  Oh well.  At least Matthew now knows that his leaders mean business and to obey them.

After that crazy week I was glad to have a few breaks.  I was able to go to Ladies Night at Zupas Friday night.  It was nice to get away and have some adult conversation for a few hours.  I also got another break Monday.  It was Columbus Day which means Aaron got it off from work, but the kids still had school.  Wahoo!!  We were down to just us and Noah and had a nice day.  It was a crazy week!

I got in trouble today.  I was volunteering in Josh's class and Josh's teacher runs a pretty tight ship.  She is very strict.  When it was time to walk down to the computer lab I walked alongside Josh.  I was very quietly asking him about his day when his teacher turned around at the front of the line (Josh was towards the end of the line) and yelled, "WHO IS TALKING?"  I sheepishly raised my hand and told her it was me.  Whoops!  I learned my lesson!  Next time I will just point to Josh and tell her it was him.  When she found out it was me she relaxed a bit, but I now know not to speak while we are walking in the hallway--or if I do blame it on Josh :).