spoken for

K had her follow-up kidney ultrasound yesterday. The urologist tells me that the one kidney is still quite a bit enlarged. Unfortunately, the last measurement he has to compare yesterday’s to was taken in early June as they didn’t do any measurements in September when she had a renal scan. (Really, WHY is beyond me. I’m no doctor but: DUH.) However, he suspects that most of the growth was done between June and September. So she will get another ultrasound in February to see what the kidney’s size is then. If it continues to get larger and larger (rather than having plateaued off) she will have to get surgery. They will need to fix the ureter that’s connected to that kidney and straighten it out as it’s currently twisted and kinked. We know from the renal scan that her kidney empties fine (at 47 out of 50%) and that the other one picks up the remaining work but apparently if the kidney continues to get too large, the doctor says that it will cause too much pressure in there, eventually damaging the kidney.

As I sit here and think about this, though, I am a bit baffled. As I remember it in September, he was telling me about the function levels and that he was confident K would grow out of the urinary reflux. I guess it’s not really any different now, but I just feel like we took an extra 3 months to get to a conclusion we should have had in September. He was saying then that he was confident she wouldn’t need surgery. Nothing I can do about all that, I guess, just move forward, but it’s a little confusing for me.

So we shall see what we shall see. Hopefully the next ultrasound will show that the kidney is not growing too big. However, if she’s going to need surgery, I’d rather she get it now than have to deal with that when she’s older. He did say that at this point it’s not really an emergency or anything (hence following up in February). Of course, ideally it would be best if the ureter would straighten itself out! He wouldn’t say that the twisted ureter was the cause of the large kidney, but he said that the two are “intimately connected.” It’s also hard for me to wrap my head around that but I THINK that it means that the ureter contributes to the slower drain of the kidney but that until the ureter is fixed it means the doctor cannot say if that is the cause of the large kidney or not.

By the way, the photo was taken just before we left to go to the hospital yesterday. Kayleigh is modeling the sweater and bonnet made by Birgit’s mum. It’s so sweet, I love it, and I melt when K wears it. :) Just something about a baby in a bonnet, heehee.
I’m glad we actually got it, too, as it was lost in the mail for a few months before finally showing up!!

And yes, I know I suck with my email and RSS reader. It’s catch-up time again, very soon!

This is one of those, oh, so typical times where I have to tell you how I was a ditz. It will also be one of those times where I am glad a certain husband does not read my blog LOL.

I was at a group with some other ladies last night and they started talking about Christmas decorations and what not. One of them brought up the topic of ceramic Christmas trees with the little plastic lights in them. Let’s not discuss how these ladies discussing these trees are quite a bit older than I am (in years not actual age, heehee) and they were actually making fun of these trees, saying they were something their grandmothers would have liked. I laughed because I have one of these trees and I bought it simply because it reminds me of my grandma and the one she had when I was little. So that reminded me I have one and tonight I decided to dig it out.
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As everyone knows, here in the US it was Thanksgiving Day yesterday. Since I regularly give thanks and often take times to just sit and reflect and remind myself not to take things for granted, the holiday to me is more or less just getting together with family. It’s also not about stuffing myself! Steve thought he was going to die yesterday after we ate at his parents’ and hours later when I am snacking at my mom’s he said what I was eating was going to make him puke. Gee, thanks. Sorry if I just eat normally and I am hungry later. :P

Kayleigh went with us to the gatherings, of course. We’ve been keeping her home and away from germs as much as possible but Thanksgiving really is a smaller holiday for us. We don’t see any of Steve’s extended family anymore and we see very little of mine and at both locations, we only ended up meeting up with about half the people. But it was still good to see everyone that we did get to see.

I am not going to bother to go through every little thing I am grateful for, that sort of list would go on for ages. But suffice it to say, this was a pretty nice treat: