Guitar Hero

Henry is gearing up to be a rock star like his dad.

Happy Birthday, Henry!

Henry turned three yesterday! He celebrated by bringing cupcakes to school, and he was excited about the gold crown his teacher gave him to wear. Unlike last year, when he was scared of his flaming Elmo cake, he LOVED his Cars cake, adorned with Lightening McQueen and Mater. We shared it with Juju, who is visiting from PA, and Filo, our cleaning lady. Andy is out of town until Friday, so we'll have another celebration then. I'll post some pics soon!

Henry is very verbal, and he talks like a regular person now, which cracks us up. He'll come up to us and say "C'mon, guys, let's go play this game!" He also remembers EVERYTHING, which is, of course, a blessing and a curse. He has many of his books memorized, and he loves to fill in the story when we pause. He continues to enjoy school and swim lessons. He was promoted to the Dolphin class a few weeks ago. (You didn't think his swimmer parents would let him slip up on that front, did you?) He's learning front crawl, and he can retrieve rings from the bottom of the pool.

Recently, Henry has dropped his usual three hour afternoon nap. I still try, but it's becoming increasingly clear that it's not happening. He has some quiet time in his room, and that's about it. He is pretty tired in the afternoon, so we put him to bed early at 7 or so. I was dreading the dropping of the nap, but, now that I have Mitch's naps to worry about, I am sort of relieved that I don't need to worry about getting Henry down.

We go to his three year well check next week, so I'll update his stats then. He's in 4T clothes, so I am guessing he's pretty high up there on the percentile for height!

Happy Birthday, sweet Henry!

The Next Step

Today we had a full day at TCH. Mitch started his morning with a blood draw, isotope injection and DMSA renal scan. Finally, we got an idea of what the division of labor is between his kidneys. Not too surprisingly, the left kidney is doing most of the work (91%) and the right is only doing 9%. He then had another VCUG to check to see if the Posterior Urethral Valves were gone. The VCUG also shows us the reflux of urine back into his right kidney. After having our tests, we met with Dr. G. He is pleased with how well the left kidney is doing, and believes it can sustain Mitch. (You only need one good kidney, after all). The problem, however, is the reflux of urine that shoots back up into his right kidney everytime he "voids" (that's urologist-speak for "going pee"). In essence, his bladder is never fully emptying. This is bad for a few reasons. First, full bladders that don't fully empty are prone to UTIs and bladder infections. Second, his bladder is having to work extra hard to empty,which can have long term negative consequences (like losing the urge to go). We'll meet with the urologist and nephrologist together to discuss, but, right now it looks like Mitchell will have surgery to remove the right kidney. We don't know when--not until he's 6 months at least--but likely soon after. We'd rather just get it over with. Because his problem developed as a result of an issue that began in utero, his bladder and right kidney are sort of "trained" this way. He had never had reflux on the left side.

Obviously, the thought of facing a surgery that involves something as invasive as removing an organ is overwhelming. But, we know that the risk of it is outweighed by the long term reward for his overall urinary tract health. If all goes well, we should only be in the hospital overnight.
We meet with the nephrologist in two weeks, so we'll know more then. Thank you for all of your prayers.