Kidney Update

Just writing with an update on the little man's kidney, now that we've finally completed the series of tests that our pediatric urologist ordered...

First was an ultrasound of his kidneys, which was done in the hospital the day he was born and confirmed the presence of an enlarged, multicystic kidney.

In an isolette for the trip from the NICU to radiology for his VCUG at 2 days old

Next was a VCUG, also done in the hospital, which showed no reflux of urine from the bladder back up the ureter toward the kidney - good news. Today he had a DMSA renal scan at Johns Hopkins to take a look at the blood flow to his kidneys.

At 3 weeks old, he slept like an angel for the entire renal scan

We were hoping that there would be some residual function, but the expectation was that there would be little to none since a true multicystic dysplastic kidney isn't really made up of real kidney tissue (it's basically just primordial tissue that never differentiated into functional kidney tissue). Unfortunately the results were as expected - the multicystic kidney is not functional. Though that was the expected outcome, it was still a little disappointing as we were holding out hope that the appearance of the kidney on ultrasound was due to a fixable blockage (which the urologist had told us does happen, in rare cases). I knew that it wasn't terribly likely, but I still hoped. At any rate, all of the tests have led to the conclusion that his left kidney is not (nor will it ever be) functional, and our little guy will be living his life with only one healthy kidney.

It's sad, but as I've said over and over, it is what we were told to expect. We've already had the opportunity to grieve over it and internalize it, and it is what it is. As our wonderful urologist has said over and over, his one good kidney will last him until he's 95 and drops dead of a heart attack - it's not something that's going to shorten his lifespan or anything horrible like that. We'll just have to be a little more careful about watching for symptoms of urinary tract problems. He also won't be able to play certain particularly dangerous contact sports (football, lacrosse, wrestling...). But since his Daddy will be grooming him for the PGA tour as soon as he can stand and hold a golf club, I'm hoping he'll be far too into golf to get upset about that ;-) It might be cliche, but the fact that he's an otherwise healthy, happy, adorable baby boy truly is the most important thing!