Friday we took Ava in for her tests. One important thing I learned that day that I must share with you -- DO NOT ASSUME that the lab techs or other doctors or staff know what they're doing. ALWAYS double check everything. That's all I have to say about that.
Thankfully, Ava's guts looked beautiful on ultrasound, so although it would be reasonable to have damage from her condition, she does not yet. That's the good news. The bad news is that she does have reflux, meaning that her urine does not stay in the bladder, it will shoot up her ureters and even into the kidneys. I cannot tell you how my heart sank as I watched on the real time x-ray as the dyed iodine went up from her filling bladder right up to her kidneys, almost immediately. The severity of the condition is rated from a 1 to a 5 (most severe), and the radiologist said she was a 3 or 4. From what I saw and I have read since, I'm guessing it is a 4. The next step was to have a follow-up with our pediatrician, who would then refer us to a pediatric urologist (although the radiologist said we would probably get referred to a pediatric surgeon, leading me to believe that he felt that it was significant enough that we may be skipping right ahead to surgery). Well, on Saturday we got a call from the pediatrician to go straight to a urologist and they were calling in the antibiotic right away. The typical treatment for this type of reflux is to put the child on a prophylactic antibiotic on a permanent basis, with yearly VCUG tests to check and see if the child has outgrown the condition. The antibiotic is supposed to help prevent the recurring UTIs which can cause kidney damage. At the age or 4 or 5 is typically when they say "ok, the kid isn't going to outgrow the condition and we need to do corrective surgery." So I have the phone number for a pediatric urologist in Austin, which I am supposed to be calling, but I am going to sniff around the internet a little bit and see what I can find out and hopefully get a great doctor on the first try. Our area is in the middle of an ice storm anyway, so I doubt their office is even open.
So, we have been gearing up for some nasty weather and likely power outage. Ryan took off this morning and soon after I realized that oh boy, I think we're going to the vet this morning. I have been getting a few phone messages from their office reminding me that it is time for Lucy's next round of shots, but we had so much hoopla last week (unfortunately Ava's bladder issues are only ONE of the things going on around here) that I hadn't gotten around to taking care of that. Well I noticed that the dog was peeing a lot yesterday, having accidents even though I was taking her out a lot. Well, this morning she was peeing every few minutes and it was dark orange. So even though it was starting to get icy outside, we piled in the car and got her over to the vet. Yes, she definitely has a bladder infection and she is also on an antibiotic. And yes, it is uncommon for a puppy to get a bladder infection. Can you guess the rest of this story??????? We didn't get into gory details today, but basically if this recurs, we are looking at possibly major bladder issues of the doggy variety.
And oh yeah, Friday night, after we spent all morning at the hospital (and I vowed to never return to that particular hospital), Ava fell while on a dining room chair in such a manner as to crack her head open on the edge of the trim of our cupboard. Blood flying, gasps flowing. Luckily Ben and Karyna were over so I didn't have to experience the fun alone, but then got to try to decide if we were headed back to hospital or not. It was pretty borderline either way, but I decided to stay home. She was acting fine but man, that is an ugly spot on the forehead. If I could ever find the time to download all of the pictures off of my camera I could have taken a picture for you, but it is probably best that the grandmas in the room don't see it anyway. It is doing much better now and healing nicely. Still ugly though.
One more thing. Public school or not is becoming an issue again. Now we are dealing with standardized test anxiety, even though my kid is doing fine and I'm sure could take a test three grade levels ahead and do fine, he gets nervous. And literally, that is all they are talking about at school right now.
So there is a lot going on around here. I need to hire someone to help me stand around worried, it is too much for me to do alone! We're all surviving though and things could be worse, so I will not complain. I will hope that we don't lose power over the next few days, though!
