Four Months Old and It Ain't Over til the Fat Kidney Drains

Before this week, battling baby eczema and baby dandruff were the top concerns here at the house of Susannah. Unfortunately we went back to the pediatric urologist for a routine sonogram on Monday and got some bad news. Susannah's left kidney had a big jump in dilation; they measured it at nearly 8 cm which apparently is much much bigger than an infant kidney should be. Her right kidney increased slightly as well.

If her kidneys were truly draining as they should, then the dilation (aka hydronephrosis) should be decreasing, not increasing. According to the tests that have been done, her kidneys have been functioning reasonably well, but the fear is that their growth and function will be compromised if we aren't more proactive. Our hope (basically my magical thinking) that her kidneys were shaped funny but working properly pretty much falls apart the more severe the dilation becomes.

The next step is an MRI, coming up this Tuesday afternoon. We were scheduled to go to NYU Hospital Thursday, spend the night and have the test Friday morning, but they called at the last minute and canceled. Now the MRI will be on an outpatient basis--no having to spend the night at the hospital--which of course is better for us.

The good thing is that the MRI gives the best possible look at her anatomy and they say it causes no side effects. The bad thing is that she will have to be sedated for the procedure. Yikes.

Our urologist published an article about the procedure in a medical journal. Check it out at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1472682

After the MRI results, we are pretty confident that a date for surgery will be set for sometime in October. They will most likely operate on her left kidney first and then we will go from there. I don't know much about what the surgery would be like, but as it is explained to me I will do my best to process it in my very un-M.D. brain and pass it along to you.

So, yeah, the whole thing is a huge bummer. We had almost stopped thinking about her kidneys altogether and I am sure many of you did too. Keep in mind that all this is being done now to prevent really major problems down the road.

Otherwise Susannah keeps on trucking and growing and talking and kicking her legs up in the air (just remember honey you can touch your toys with your hands too). She's four months old today. Wow. One of these days I'll post something about the day she was born. A friend mentioned to me that we don't have anything about our labor experience on the blog and that is a good story worth sharing....soon.

But blah blah blah, how about some photos?



A rainy weekend but we went to the Botanic Garden anyway. They were having their annual Chile Pepper Fiesta and Susannah heard Pete Seegar singing "She'll Be Comin Round the Mountain." Maybe next year she'll have her first chile pepper.








Just fell asleep on mom's chest. She did this a lot when she was only a few weeks old but these days it's rare so we had to capture the moment. Look at that wittle mouth.










Baby Airplane in the window with Dad. With head control like that she'll be a pilot anyday now.














Finally she smiles for the camera! If this position was hurting her ribs, she'd tell us, right?