This next week is going to be nuts. I'll start from the beginning with last week's information.
Last week we went and saw a new urologist. This was our first visit past the "meet and greet". This urologist, Dr. P, decided to run some tests that we had never done before. Through the testing Dr. P found out that Levi's bladder doesn't hold even half of the amount it should. They expect a newborn baby to be able to hold about 3 oz of urine. Levi, as a 3 year old, should be able to hold at least 5 oz of urine in his bladder. Levi holds about 2 oz. The rest of it gets pushed up into his kidney. This was something that we expected to see. What we did not expect is what came next. We also found out that when Levi goes to the bathroom, he only empties out about half of the urine that is in his bladder and kidney. Therefore, his bladder and kidney almost always have old urine sitting in there.
After learning all of this, we also decided that a transplant won't stop this from happening. They expect that his bladder will grow a little bit with a kidney transplant, but not enough in Levi's case. This leads us to what is coming up, this next week Levi will be having surgery to fix this. The surgery is called a uretal/bladder reimplantation. I've gone ahead and linked that so that you can look up more facts and information. We will also be putting in a dialysis catheter. Not because he needs dialysis right now, but because he is borderline needing dialysis. As his parents, we would rather put him through just one surgery and do both of these things then have to open him up again. If we don't use the catheter, that is fine, we can remove it at the time of transplant.
Our hope and prayer is that this will help solve issues that could arise again after transplant. I am nervous, especially this close to Christmas. We should be able to go home a day or two after surgery. Please pray for peace for our family, and for the doctors over doing this. My anxeity is through the roof on this one. I really dislike having to decide if what we're doing is best for Levi, or if we're just working on borrowed time anyways. I know that God can and will protect Levi during this time and I need to just calm down and THANK HIM for getting us this far without having to do any of these procedures.
