Dreading Thursday

We finally have Emma's follow up appointments from her UTI scheduled and it looks like Thursday of this week is the big day. We are scheduled for a Renal Sonogram at Johns Hopkins Hospital starting bright and early at 8:00AM, with her voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) test scheduled to begin at 9:00AM. Immediately after her VCUG procedure is complete, we head down the street to meet with a pediatric urologist to talk about the results. Luckily, there isn't any waiting involved and before we leave that day we will know (with 80% certainty) whether or not Emma has renal reflux, or anything else that may have caused her UTI.

The VCUG test is only about 80% accurate because it has a lot to do with timing. They need to have Emma do exactly what they need her to do within that hour that the test is happening. Based on the statistics from the hospital, about 6 - 8% of the general population has renal reflux, and we have about a 30% chance that Emma has it, which could be worse (at least that's what I am telling myself). She has a higher chance because of having the UTI so young. There are a lot of reasons why someone that is 5 or 6 can get a UTI, but those reasons don't typically apply to someone at this age, which is why the percentage is higher and additional testing needs to be done.

If it ends up that Emma does in fact does have reflux, it will be graded on a 1 to 5 scale; where 1 is slight and 5 is basically severe reflux that overfills the kidneys (I'm pretty sure it's not this serious). There isn't any sedation involved with is both good and bad because it's not really necessary, but it means that we are going to have one angry baby because of all the tests she has been put through lately. The sonogram takes about 45 minutes, and the VCUG test will take about an hour.

Please keep Emma in your thoughts on Thursday morning since she is going to have quite a rough morning.

On a side note, we did find out something interesting throughout this whole process. We were told that Emma is resistant to the antibiotic Ampicillin, which belongs to the penicillin group. This was pretty surprising given the fact that she has NEVER been on antibiotics until this UTI event.