Jovie's Appointment

We had a really good appointment with Jovie's new Pediatric Urologist, Dr. Grady, from Children's Hospital on Friday. He explained Jovie's condition to us in excellent detail, and is allowing her to continue a prophylaxis antibiotic (preventative daily antibiotic) for another year to year and a half while we wait to see if the problem corrects itself. In case you don't remember from my previous post, Jovie has vesicouretal reflux, which means that urine which should normally stay in the bladder until being emptied travels back up the ureter into the kidney (just on the right side) when the bladder gets full. This puts Jovie at a high risk for kidney and/or UTIs because of potential bacteria that could enter her urine and travel up to infect her kidney. The problem is a "weak" connection where the ureter meets the bladder. This problem can sometimes be outgrown with age, so the doctor wants to see us again in 12-18 months to retest to see if anything has improved on its own. The most likely scenario however is that she will remain infection-free for 12-18 months because of the antibiotics, but will still have the weak spot and reflux when she is retested, which will lead us to dealing with correction of the problem (ie: surgery). Overall it was exactly what we wanted to hear at this point in time (no rushed surgery for our 10 month old), and we feel reassured with this doctor and the attention we received during our appointment. Still no easy fix for this, and it's been brought to light that there is a 30% chance that Jack could have the same condition, and when they asked us if he's ever had any unexplained fevers, Rob and I just looked at each other and I replied, "Yeah, lots". This doesn't mean that he has it...there are lots of explanations for random fevers, but it does mean that he has to have an ultrasound to get everything checked out. So, antibiotic every night for Jovie, an ultrasound for Jack, and an appointment at Children's in another year at the earliest to get Jovie retested.

We spent the end of the week in Seattle with Rob's parents. Jack's grandma took him to the zoo and took care of him while we had Jovie's appointment. From there we went up to Mill Creek to Jason and Sydney's house for fun-filled weekend. We played games, went to So You Think You Can Dance (the tour) at the Everett Events Center, and lounged around the house for an overall relaxing weekend. A great time with family and friends! Now we're just getting geared up for Thanksgiving (thank the Lord it's only a three day work week for me) at my mom's, and hopefully a visit from Rob's family on the weekend.