a kidney stone? Yikes. I had no idea they were like bits of rock candy. I always thought they were like blood clots because you peed out blood when passing a stone, but you actually pee out blood because of the sharp points scraping your ureter. OUCH! (not her actual stone)
After we sold our our house in Bountiful the Pink One started to have some night time pee accidents and often complained about having a pain in her side. I took her to the Dr. and she tested positive for having a UTI. Round 1 of antibiotics complete and we were headed to the UK. Shortly after arriving here the pain returned and the pee accidents started again, but this time we had no health care. We quickly learned that everything here takes twice as long as you would expect. We lived here 4 months before they came to install our home phone and internet. Yeah, that long. Long story short, the Pink One was finally seen and diagnosed with hydronephrosis in her left kidney. This means that the kidney is filling with pee, not draining, and stretching which is causing pain. After her second ultra-sound which was performed at the Children's Hospital in London they found that she has a large kidney stone blocking part of her ureter. The Dr.'s believe that the stone has formed because the kidney is not functioning properly. It is very rare for a child to get kidney stones. We knew that with her prematurity some problems could come creeping up over time, so the Dr.'s are looking to see if the problem is related or if she is just terribly unlucky.
There are many things that I think are wonderful about socialised medicine starting with the fact that everyone gets to be cared for free of charge. I hate the idea of sick children going untreated because the parents don't have insurance. I think it is crazy how much prescriptions are and love that I can get mine for free. On the flip side of this, you wait hours for a visit even when you have a scheduled appt. The Blue One made the devil himself jealous with his naughty behaviour on the train, by screaming 45 minutes straight at rush hour. The passengers wanted to throw us off. I wanted to cry. 5 hours after our journey started we returned home completely knackered. We will receive in the mail our next appt. time for the Pink One to have the dye test, blood test, 24 hour urine collection, and then she will have the stone shocked. In order to shock the stone to break it up and pass, they have to put the Pink One out.
I am amazed how strong and brave this sweet girl has been for the last 6 months. I can't even begin to imagine how she must feel and have felt for a long time. I am praying that they will be able to schedule us in sooner than later. In the meantime, I am washing lots of panties :) Poor thing. I am positive that once they get the stone taken care of they will figure out how to fix up the kidney. She is on a low dose of antibiotics that she has been taking for the past month and a half. All in good time. I am learning to be more patient and to have greater faith as the length of time to get things done here continues to grow.
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