Thankful. At the end of a LONG day!

Well, we spent six hours at castle (Sanford Children's Hospital) today. Luella toughed it out through a bunch of not-fun stuff. We pretty much had tears from the get-go today. Starting with refusing to put the id bracelet on! :-( We picked our battles and I wore it instead!

Unfortunately even getting the medication to relax her wasn't enough to calm her for placing the catheter. Actually I doubt it helped at all. She screamed! Poor thing! Then even having to lie still for the radiology part of the test was difficult. I was able to distract her for awhile with some games on an iPad. At the end of the test they needed her to pee while lying on the bed so they could take x-ray pictures of her bladder emptying. What a battle that was!! She did NOT want to have anything to do with laying down while going potty! After a solid 10 minutes of crying she gave in and finally went. She looked pretty rough after all that crying. Once they got her cleaned up and a fresh gown on, we moved her to her bed and they covered her up with a nice warm blanket. She burrowed under that blanket and covered up her head like she was never coming out again!!

After all the testing she got to go back up to her outpatient room and chicken strips and RANCH arrived just as we got there! That was enough to perk a girl up!! She hadn't gotten to eat lunch before the testing so she was hungry!! It was about 3:00 by this point. After getting a full tummy we checked in with Dr. Eeg's office and got the results from everything.

Basically, things look good! Answered prayers!! She still has grade 2 reflux on the left side but the right is pretty much normal. Looking back to 2010 she was a grade 4 on the left and a grade 2 on the right. (Reflux is graded on a 0 to 5 scale, with 5 being the worst.) Things have even improved since her last visit about a year ago. Her kidneys are still looking healthy too! Since she still has reflux issues, UTIs can result. Why she went so long without one and then ended up with an infection right before Christmas is hard to say. Dr. Eeg wants to keep her on a prophylactic antibiotic for another six months and then we'll see how she does after that. He is still hopeful that the reflux will eventually correct itself. We are thankful to have that news!

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and prayers for Luella today! Even though she still had many tears I definitely felt strong in dealing with them and was able to hold it together so we weren't both in a puddle!! We'll spend tomorrow doing lots of fun things at home!! Thanks again!!

Luella enjoying her well-deserved chicken strips after everything was done today! And, no, she did NOT eat all those fries! She maybe ate 5! :-)

A day of tests tomorrow...

Just wanted to post an update about Luella and ask for some prayers as she goes in for some tests tomorrow. Thankfully she has been feeling great since her last illness during the first week of January. She was sick then with a stomach bug and a couple more seizures. You may remember reading about the issues we had right before Christmas when Luella had a UTI and endured five seizures in just 25 hours! It was a difficult illness and so hard to see her have so many seizures in such a short time. I contact her urologist in Sioux Falls and he decided that with Luella's history of vesicoureteral reflux, it would be a good idea to run more tests to see what we are dealing with now. The way things were left at her appointment last spring - we would wait to see him again in 12 - 18 months OR if Luella had any more UTIs. We were encouraged that things seemed to be improving, and they may still be. Her infection in December could have been a fluke, but it's something we need to get checked out.

That being said, tomorrow is the big day. She will have about three different tests done, the last one - VCUG (voiding cystourethrogram), is one she's had done quite a few times but it's also not a pleasant test. We've opted to let them give her a med to make her a little more relaxed during the procedure this time. I'm praying that she will handle it all okay. In the past there's always been many tears during this so I'm hoping the medication will help with that. She will just be outpatient but will have a room up at the castle during the day to prep for the tests and to let her recover a little afterwards. When everything is done we'll have the chance to meet with her urologist to see what the results are. I should have some news tomorrow night.

Thanks for your prayers. The big test will start around 12:30 tomorrow, we'll be there earlier for some of the other testing.