Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Urology at Scottish Rite

Ruth had her first urology appointment since leaving San Francisco at Scottish Rite Hospital. Daddy and the two preschool age sisters went with us.

Ruth first had a renal sonogram, which doesn't tell us much besides if her kidneys are swollen (one was at birth). Everything looked great on the sonogram. Ruth slept through the entire thing, she must of worn her self out crying the entire drive over. They had a little t.v. for the kids getting the sonogram, but since Ruth was sleeping, and isn't quite the age of watching t.v., it was made good use by her sisters.

We then met with the urologist and staff. I really liked him, very personable! He looked over Ruth's test results from San Francisco, and told us, based on that information he wouldn't do anything for her. No cathing, no ditropan, no antibiotics!! So we are going to do a trial stop period to see how she does. She could end up going back if she starts getting feverous uti's. He will test her kidneys for scar tissue in 3 months, and if that shows scar tissue, then she could go back to cathing/meds routine too. But for now, she is FREE!

(Side note: apparently different urologists in different areas of the country have different schools of thought on how to treat SB kids. The SF docs are much more aggressive than the doctors here. What one is better? It's not known. For now, unless otherwise indicated, we prefer the more conservative approach.)

Coming Up:

We go back to Scottish Rite hospital next week for orthopedics, which will most likely entail casting her legs for club foot. Then we go back the following week for the Spina Bifida Clinic.

We've had a little trouble getting in with a neurosurgeon here. The first one at Children's our insurance wouldn't cover, and the 2nd one at Cook's, we couldn't get an appointment until December. They may do a ct scan on her head at the Spina Bifida Clinic while we are there, just to make sure everything is still ok. Since she does not have a vp shunt, we still need to watch her closely for signs of increasing hydrocephalus (projectile vomiting, sunsetting eyes, rapidly increasing head circumference, bulging soft spot, overly sleepy, overly fussy).

A few photos from today, they were taken with my phone so excuse the poor quality:




2 comments:

  1. Did you know the same neurosurgeons from Children's Medical Center also see kids at Scottish Rite? We use Dr. Swift and we go to yearly neurosurgery clinics with him at Scottish Rite. If they have to do surgery though I think they go to children's and then may not be covered but for the yearly routine stuff they can monitor at SR. Not sure if they do any surgeries that intense at SR....Autumn can never get any surgeries there because of her trach. ;)

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  2. Lacy - they want Ruth to get established with a neurosurgeon outside of Scottish Rite, since her first surgery was in SF. They did say we could switch to seeing them at Scottish Rite once she is a year old, but since the neuro surgeries aren't done at Scottish Rite, it may be best for us to stick with the docs at Cooks that are under our insurance. But who knows!

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