Clarke's Surgery

We had to arrive at the hospital at 5:30 am!! Here is Daddy reading to Clarke while we are waiting to get checked in. She was so happy!

Here is she when she got to the pre-op holding area, her and Big Baby.

Once she put on her gown, they let her color on her sheets! (I didn't know that was allowed!!)

Here she is the next morning. Daddy brought her a StarBucks because she was supposed to be drinking so we could get out of the hospital!!! (She took one tiny sip).

And even though she wasn't really drinking, Dr. Perez let her go anyways (probably because he knew that I could take care of her at home!)

Here is the "sick spot" at home. She spent several days recovering on the couch. It was good to be home though! 

So, after several UTIs, one causing pyelonephritis (actually probably 2), we went to see a pediatric urologist and did some tests, including a VCUG and found out that Clarke had (hopefully we can speak of it as in the past) vesicoureteral reflux. This is when after you urinate, some urine is retained and refluxes back to your kidneys. She had it on both sides. This is what was causing the infections. Hers was so bad that she had less than a 30 % chance of getting rid of it without intervention. So when she was diagnosed, he put her on a prophylactic antibiotic and gave us several options for intervention. One being stay on the antibiotic for a year and see if it goes away (not an option in my book). Two being open surgery to reimplant her ureters. Three being a less invasive procedure called Deflux. This was a tough decision. The Deflux procedure would be outpatient, done through a catheter and you were fine the next day. However, the success rate was only 80%. It is also a newer procedure and not a lot of long term effect research has been done. The open surgery was 96-99% effective. We chose that. 

She has a what Perez calls "bikini cut" incision that is healing wonderfully. One month later there is still one steri strip on and she does NOT want you to remove it! Funny! She had a followup appointment with Dr. Perez last week. He did a renal ultasound to check on things. He said everything looks great and there is no blockage (one of the possible complications). We will not actually know if she still has reflux unless she has another VCUG done. That is more invasive and is not necessary unless she has multiple UTIs or a kidney infection. Her urine culture came back negative so we were able to stop the antibiotic!!! yay!!! 4 months of an antibiotic was not to my liking! 

So now we are working on potty training all over again! She is doing great!!