What's next?

So some of you I may have talked with about how the nephrologist called me after our last visit and expressed that her radiologist felt that what was seen on the ultrasound done at NMCP (Naval Hosptial) was artifacts and that she wanted to re-do the ultrasound at CHKD (Children's hospital) on a day when she was there.

That day was today.

We started out at 8am with an echo and meeting with the cardiologist.  Her heart looked perfect on the echo and he felt she didn't have any issue with hypertension and gave me 120/85 as a high number for a kid,  said he would need to plot her on the growth chart for an accurate "good range" which he didn't do but did give me a chart to do it myself and sent us walking.  According to the chart she falls in the 95-99th percentile in her average BP that we find her with......  BUT he's a cardiologist who says my kid isn't hypertensive surely the kidney ultrasound is going to be perfect too......

We had an appointment next at 10am in the kidney clinic at another CHKD office in Norfolk.  They did an ultrasound and the tech went and met with the radiologist and came back in with their typical questions of "has she ever had a UTI, kidney trauma etc" at which I answered no  as usual, and they took more pictures.  I knew then that they saw the same mysterious "whatever" they saw on the last one.  We went up and met with Dr. Restaino (the pediatric nephrologist) and she told us she still had no idea what they were seeing and they needed a CT.  SO she did the CT, which was followed by a CT with contrast.

Lets me start with the fact that Ella getting the IV for the contrast was of course horrible.  HORRIBLE.  A team of nurses holding her down and me totally giving into my own tears and having to hold her head and yell at her to calm down.  She was in pure hysterics.  She did calm down and did well and is proud to talk about the experience.
I could not go in with her for the CT and be near the radiation because I'm pregnant.  I feel horrible for yelling at her and paced and twitched the entire time.

By this time it was 3:00PM and the nephrologist wanted to meet with us but we had 800 people meeting us at the Portsmouth house today, we were in a line of several, and the kids had not eaten since breakfast.   So the Dr. said it would be fine if she called us at home.  Again, in my simple mind, how bad can news be over the phone?

The call came around 6.  Just after the A/C guy left our Portsmouth house.  The news was a little like:

There is definitely something on her right kidney.  Her left kidney is in fact fine. We don't know for sure what is on her right kidney but you're telling me she has never had any trauma, infections etc that involved her kidneys right? (Answer is always the same nothing that we know of has ever happened to her kidneys.)  We see an abnormality that is not a normal abnormality that we see in kids.  It looks like it could be an infection but the type would be a type that we normally see in older people and she would likely have more symptoms and be sicker than she is.  (she isn't sickly at all except for the elevated BP) SO the other thing it could be is a tumor.  We could stick a needle in there and biopsy it ......this part followed by why that's not a good idea blah blah blah...... I think this is where I stopped breathing or maybe started hyperventilating and things are fuzzy from there.....

I also heard something about a chest x-ray on Thursday (which Jon got too when he talked to the Dr.) and that they want it to be done at the Naval Hospital because oncology is right there, something about removing the entire kidney and people live totally normal lives with just one kidney....... Tumors like this we never find this small, it is contained at 2 cm, normally when we find tumors here they are 10+ cm.

Oh my goodness.  Hole LEE crap.  Someone used my beautiful, lively, goofy, sweet girl's name in the same sentence as the word Cancer and she is 7.5 years old, and barely 50lbs of solid muscle, energy and spunk.

Jon was in Oklahoma and jumped on the first plane home.  His mom is coming in tomorrow night as she had planned to come next month when the baby comes now she will be with us longer to help.  Praise God for her.

Oh yeah.  I'm having baby #3 in 18 days or less.  This is about to get real.