Our Dynamic Urodynamics Appointment

Ok, I admit, I failed at making the title enticing.  It's a bit hard to think of a clever title when you are talking about updates from the world of urology.  I tried, though.


Today Madi had a urodynamics study, her third thus far, and the results were pretty good! 


It was a looooooooooong study, much longer than normal.  First, the nurse had Madi lay down, but then left the room to talk to the doctor.  We happily waited.  Then, she cathed Madi and told me her urine was a little cloudy. I told her it was because I had to wake Madi up from a nap to get her there, and she had not had anything to drink since the last cathing, since she was napping.  She decided to test the urine, just to be safe (which was a decision I supported, don't get me wrong!), but left Madi all hooked up to the monitors and tubes while she left to test it.  The test showed a very slight infection, so she had the doctor spin it and look at it under a microscope.  The doctor did not see anything that looked like an infection/bad bacteria (bacteria is expected with a child cathed, so they only look for certain bacteria), so they sent it off to be cultured, then she came back to finish the test. 


The test itself took about 10 minutes, but poor Madi had to lay there closer to an hour.  She was SUCH a trooper, though!  They put a movie on for her, but she could care less about it, so I had to be creative in finding ways to convince her to lay still and not mess with the tubing.  Annie's organic gummy rabbits were amazing... for about 3 seconds until they were gone.  After that, the phone worked for a bit (looking at the photos and videos on it), then we read some books, played with her baby monkey stuffed animal, drew (while laying down), played with the stuffed animal more, sang songs, and did the etch-a-sketch.  Fun, fun!!


After the test, we met with the doctor, who said her bladder was not being spastic and appeared to be pretty normal, which is an improvement from last time.  He also said that it has grown and is holding more urine.  Though it is still not a "normal" bladder, which for her age would hold about 120 somethings of urine, it's pretty good, holding about 80 somethings of urine.  He started to tell me the dithropan was doing it's job, then remembered we took her off the dithropan ;). 


The plan is to watch and wait, and see what happens.  He moved her to once a year for her tests, which was nice.  Sadly, she cannot go off of antibiotics yet, though the doctor and I did have a nice lengthy discussion about why I hate them, and he agreed, so that was good.  He explained surgery options that might fix her reflux so that she didn't need it, and why those were just not good options right now.  So, for now, we watch and wait.


In other news, Madi also had wheelchair clinic this week at CRS.  She needed some small adjustments made to her chair.  Here's a picture of her and Conner goofing off together.  They had so much fun!

They tweaked the breaks to tighten them, lowered the foot plate, and we are good to go!  Madi hasn't even had this chair a year, and in the beginning, her feet did not come anywhere close to the foot plate.  This time they lowered the foot plate by 1 1/2 inches, so that her feet just rest nicely.  Good growing, big girl!