hey guys, i know laura was sweet enough to email some or all of you, but i wanted to give you an update now that ive had a chance to sit down. we had a wonderful experience at cooks today and everyone there was extremely knowledgeable and amazing. however, we learned that unlike what hendrick previously told us, grahams kidneys are not okay. that are swollen and a little miss-shaped and have many pockets of fluid in them from all this reflux with his bladder. 1% of children have reflux, but only half of one percent have it in both kidneys as we found out graham has. on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the worst reflux, one kidney is a 5 and one is a 4. with this is mind, the dr. is not sure that he will be able to heal himself. most kids with a reflux of just one or 2 on the scale heal themselves. kids with a 3 or 4 are maybe 10% likely to heal themselves, but 5 dont look so good. we will have to bring graham in regularly to check on this and see if they are healing themselves, while keeping him on antibiotics constantly. if he continues to get infections while on the anti. then we will have to operate. if he doesnt get sick, but doesnt improve then we will still have to operate. if by some chance his reflux slowly each year goes from a 5 to a 4 and then to a 3 and so on, we may not have to do anything. the dr. gave us a 50 % chance of it healing itself without surgery. if we do have to do surgery, he gave us a 95% of recovery which is good. he doesnt want to do it unless necessary b/c of other complications if can have. the surgery would involve an incision in his abdomen and going in from there to work on his bladder, connecting it properly, etc.

he was also concerned today that there might be a blockage keeping grahams kidneys from working properly. unfortunately to know for sure, we are going to have to go back to cooks and do another test which also involved a catheter but this time he will also need an iv. very scary for jm and me, especially since we both got sick to our stomach walking into the vcug testing today, b/c of all that happened at hendrick. i thought i would be fine, but i suddenly got very sick. we are waiting to hear from them about when this test will be. probably in the next couple weeks. if we find a blockage they will need to do surgery fairly quickly. this involves an incision in his back, by the kidney, cutting out the part of the "tubing" connected to the kidney that is blocked, and reattaching it to the kidney.
again, complications may happen and this is definitely not something we want to have to do. his "tubes" are supposed to be going straight from his kidney to bladder, but b/c of all the pressure from the reflux, they are enlarged and looking for space to stretch out, so we saw today in the film how swirled and kinked up they are, b/c theyre running out of room.

the dr.s main concern, from what i gathered is that his kidneys havent already had such irreversible damage that they will stop working properly. he said we have no idea at this point whether they have scarring or how bad. he didnt say that with babies their kidneys are so tiny, unlike with adults, that even a small amount of scarring can keep them from growing and forming as they should. we pray that b/c of the length of time that it took dr.s to diagnose graham, this hasnt already happened. the dr. today said it does happen more often with kids these ages, b/c their pediatricians simply dont know what they have until its so far into the infection, like with graham.

i guess jm and i had told ourselves so many times that everything would be fine, that we were just really surprised to hear all the news we heard today. severe reflux, blockages, surgeries, ....its just all a lot to take in. thank you all so much for your prayers. we are so lucky to have an amazing church family that is always there for us. we love you all and will keep you posted. joy