In August we had an appointment with a pediatric urologist to see how Emsley's kidney reflux was doing. Unfortunately it was still quite severe and the doctor told us that surgery would be needed. We knew this was most likely going to be the outcome ever since my ultrasound during my pregnancy showed Emsley's problems, but we didn't think she would need the surgery until around 3 or 4 years old. The doctor basically told us that doing it at her age now (2 years) was beneficial because there weren't any added risks of the anesthesia at her age now vs. in a few years, and toddlers bounce back quicker than older kids. Not to mention that doing it before potty training would be way easier than having her potty trained and then have to go back to wearing diapers for her recovery--a huge setback.
Pre-op: We were so surprised that Emsley was in such a good mood considering she wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything that morning. She loved playing with all the toys and then they gave her special pajamas and socks to wear. The only thing she didn't like was being scrubbed down by the disinfectant wipes that the nurse had me use.
We waited about 2 hours until they took her back. She had the whole waiting room laughing with all of her excitement over this cow toy--she was screaming "MOO!" over and over. They also gave her a doll to color, but it ended up looking like a super creepy voodoo doll so it might have been tossed in the trash later that day.
15 minutes before she went into surgery they gave her some medicine called "Versed" which makes anxiety go away and causes extreme drowsiness and forgetfulness of the procedure. She went from being a hyper 2 year-old to this:
She was under anesthesia from around 11am to 3pm--a very long 4 hours of waiting. Thankfully the nurse called the waiting room every hour to give us an update. She basically just told us that Emsley was fine, her vitals were good, they had re-implanted the ureters and were moving on to the next step, etc.
They allowed one parent to go back as soon as she was waking up. She was white as a ghost and obviously really confused, but even the nurses kept saying how sweet and calm she was being. Her "caudal block" (aka: epidural) had just been given so she didn't have much feeling in her abdomen or legs for about 8 hours after waking up. She wanted to drink juice right away.
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| Isn't that doll creepy? |
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| Settled in the hospital room |
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| Summer came to visit but Emsley wasn't too pleased to see anyone--she just wanted mama. |
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| Not feeling so hot :( |
The absolute worst part was that she wouldn't take ANY medicine to help the pain or antibiotics to prevent infection. I tried everything! It is truly a miracle that she didn't end up back in the hospital.
Actually, I take that back. The real worst part was the "stent" that she came home with. It is a small tube that went from inside of her ureter, through the bladder wall, and out of her incision. It drained urine into her diaper to help with the swelling. The stent was stitched in, but the stitch wasn't very tight. Every time the stent even slightly moved when I was changing her diaper, she would go absolutely crazy with pain.
It was supposed to stay in for 7 days but I called on day 6 and told them it was coming out that day and I wasn't taking no for an answer. Thankfully they let us come in that morning. As soon as it was pulled out (which didn't seem to cause her any pain, totally weird) she felt so much better and wasn't in agony every time I needed to change her.
We are SO incredibly glad its over. Grateful that everything went as planned but even more grateful that we don't have to go through that experience hopefully ever again. Waking up to a screaming toddler every hour, every night for almost a week was miserable.
**Update: We went back for her 6 week post-surgery ultrasound and everything looks great. The doctor says her bladder and kidneys are healing nicely and not to worry about anything at this point. Yay!! She has a little scar exactly like my c-section scar--we match :) **
