The way I see it....

Blake's appointments

I haven’t talked a lot about Blake in my column lately and how he’s doing because there hasn’t been much to say.  A good problem for sure!

Last week Blake had labs on Wednesday here at home and the results  were mostly good except his kidney function numbers went up (that’s  bad) for the second month in a row.  When I say they went up, it  wasn’t by a lot.  That being said, my mind works into overdrive that  it’s trending in the wrong direction and that he’s going to have to have surgery and we’re going to have to start cathing him again, etc., etc, etc.  Yes, I know I have an overactive mind.  It’s not my  best quality.

Blake had his six month check-up in Iowa City last Friday.  On the docket for the day was an ECHO for his heart (done yearly and standard transplant procedure), an ultrasound on his kidney and bladder (done every sixth months and standard procedure) and consults with the urologist and nephrologist (kidney) doctors. Aaron teases me that I’m “Miss Expert” at the ultrasounds for his kidney and bladder.  I can’t help it.  He’s had so many and I can  generally tell when something is wrong.  He texted me afterwards and asked how I thought things looked.  I told him it didn’t look like a ton of fluid around his kidney (great news), but there was a weird  floaty thing in his bladder that I had never seen before.  I was kind of puzzled.  I think Aaron was doubting me.

After the ultrasound we met with urology in which Dr. Storm said, “kidney looks stable, but there was this strange thing in his bladder that we aren’t really sure what it is.”  While I’m not happy I was right, I kind of did feel like a semi-expert at that point.  Long story short - the doctor had a couple of theories, but no definitive answers as to what it was.  He said we could open him up, but nobody wanted to open that can of worms since it appears to not be doing any harm.  We’re just going to keep an eye on it.

Dr. Jetton, our kidney doctor, was really happy with how Blake is doing.  The two best parts of that appointment were that she said we would shoot for the summer to get his g-tube (feeding tube) out of his   stomach and she knocked two more meds off of his daily list.  At the worst of things we were at 20 plus, so to be down to five meds just twice a day is so, so great!

It’s funny how some things change and some things stay the same.  I was hit with that hospital smell as soon as I walked in, along with the hustle and bustle of people heading to and from appointments.  The tired, stressed out looks on family member’s faces was all too familiar. On the other hand, I have a five (almost six) year old, who hops up to get his blood pressure taken, who doesn’t need anesthesia for his ECHO, can hold still during his ultrasound and can answer on his own the questions he was asked by doctors and nurses. I was reminded how much I have to be grateful for with those good reports, especially with all the sickness I was confronted with.  I was also reminded to never take a single good day for granted, but 
that’s just the way I see it.