"We Should Be Thankful"

Yesterday Loredana had her annual Horror Fest that the medical community has named VCUG. First she gets an ultrasound-the best part. Then she goes and changes into a hospital gown (filled with oodles of horrible memories from her two hospital stays and 3 previous VCUG's). Then they strap her to a table put in a catheter to fill her bladder up not empty it. While they are filling her bladder they take a series of x-rays to see what her body does with the fluid in her extremely full bladder.
So yesterday, as soon as we walk into the room where the bladder part of the test takes place she says to us, "I don't need to do this. I don't need it." She had memories rushing back to her. Then, they put the catheter in, emptied her bladder, strapped her legs down so she couldn't dislodge the tube and LEFT HER THERE FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES with nothing to do, but cry until the doctor came in. So they finally did the test-she is the same as last year, no improvement so I am pretty sure the urologist will require us to take some medical action now because she is almost 4 years old and potty trained, two things that made it possible for us to "wait a little longer" before. At the end of the test, they have to x-ray the bladder as it empties. So the doctor told Loredana to pee. She said, " I don't have to go." We were looking at her bladder on the TV monitor. It looked like a hot air balloon. She kept insisting she didn't need to go. They poured water for her, nothing. But she was screaming because she was uncomfortable. The nurse said, "Wow, she's a tough one." They had to hook up another bottle to the catheter to make her pee-not fun.

We stopped and got a Slurpee on the way home. When we were at the Rainbow Curve, Loredana says to me, "Can you hurry us home because I need to go to the bathroom really bad!" All she would need at this point after the torture of the afternoon is to have an accident in the car. So I pulled over to Borders and took her to the bathroom. Only to find out that she had blood in her urine. That had never happened before. (sorry, Kelly, my tenses are all over the place!) I called the testing center for advice, they tried to convince me that it was just irritations from the catheter, not to worry, it will slowly become less and less. I spent the next five hours worrying about whether or not I should take her to the emergency room. After several phone calls with my Pediatrician's office I decided not to take her in for more medical violations. This morning everything seems to have returned to normal and she seems to have recovered PHYSICALLY-the mental and emotional results are harder to heal.

After the initial test and the bad news results I was upset in the parking lot. I told Doug that I just keep waiting for this to be over and it keeps going. The thing is, this is a relatively mild problem. It can be fixed and as long as we keep her on antibiotics and well hydrated it is not life threatening. It could be worse. She could have terminal cancer-I don't know how people handle that, I would completely LOSE IT! "We should just be thankful."