The big catch up

I'm behind in here so I'm going to try to get you caught up without being confusing.

On Friday, 3/20 we saw Dr. V. He wants to remove the native kidney. He seems to think that it could be acting as a "stagnant pond" for the bacteria and with very little blood and urine flowing through it the abx aren't reaching to it. He is however, not completely convinced this is the solution to the ongoing/recurring infection problem. But since it does make sense we agreed to go forward. He wants to do a VCUG first to see if she is refluxing from the bladder into the new kidney. Since we already had the biopsy planned he wanted to try to schedule the VCUG for the same day before the biopsy. Obviously we don't want to suck out a piece of the kidney and then potentially fill it up with urine so one has to go before the other. At the time, he wasn't sure he could get it scheduled but today (3/26) we found it it did get scheduled for 8:30am on the 30th.

So, once the biopsy results are back, and provided they don't show anything we're not expecting, the surgery will be scheduled. The biopsy results should only take 48 hours to come back. I talked to Dr. M's nurse today and it really sounds like they expect the results to be the medication toxicity; however, they won't be able to make the switch to the replacement med until after the surgery because one of its side effects is poor wound healing... That didn't seem to be a big deal, the nurse said that Dr. M would likely just reduce her Prograf dosage. Her creatinine from the 3/24 labs was still at 0.9, so I asked if renal transplants can rebound after a prolonged increase in creatinine like this and she said "yes, absolutely!" So, that made me feel better.

We talked to Dr. V about how long the hospital stay would be and how long the recovery would be. He's giving some thought to saving the ureter from that old kidney to use later to make into bladder tissue. If he does that then it will be a longer stay with potential external drains. If he doesn't do that then it should be just an overnight stay with pain management as really the only issue. We'll know more when he makes that final decision. We understand the pros and cons and have decided to let him make that decision.

Katie has been pretty upset. We've also had some other family sadness lately as my mother in law passed away late last week, Steve and I left for New York last Saturday, I came home alone on Monday and the kids and I went back up on Tuesday (3/24) for the viewings and funeral. Today Katie had to stay home from school for another day because of a migraine. Seems like the combination of 2 late nights and the stress didn't sit well with her system. She had a PICC line dressing change today which seemed to really upset her too. I'm thinking of talking to the docs about pulling the PICC out when we finish these abx. Even if we have to have a new one put back in after the biopsy then so be it, but her skin is really broken down and I'm really worried about the scar tissue that's being created around the catheter. It's definitely something to think about.

We also gave a urine culture sample on Tuesday to be sure the abx was working before doing the biopsy and that came back clean, so we are definitely a go for the biopsy on Monday.

If you're confused or have any questions, please feel free to ask.