Kidney Update

Had our second meeting with the kidney doc today--very positive. He liked the last test results and his weight gain (finally got that going well!). Right now his "main job is to gain weight" and our job is to sit back and watch it.

With reduced kidney function you usually have some problems with kids growing (paging Gary Coleman), but usually not in the first year of life. But after that he might get a growth hormone. We do have proof that he's not growing like his siblings--he's right on target for height, weight, etc. for his age--we've never heard that before :P (and to think I got scolded when I referred to him as the runt after he was born)

Other than making sure a few chemicals (some of which I can spell the names of) in the blood stay okay, there's really nothing more to do than to wait.

Based on how things are looking *at the moment* it's unlikely that we'll have to do dialysis before the transplant, Doc guesses that by the time he gets bad, he'll be big enough to do the operation. Right now, he could be ready by the time he's 2.5 yrs old, but the doc gave us the window today of 2-6 years old. Because we've been asked frequently, we asked the doc if it was likely that he'd continue improving enough that we wouldn't need the transplant. His answer: No. Umm, unh-unh. Yesterday he saw a couple of kids with dysplastic kidneys, one would probably not need anything, the other maybe would be okay. But Machen? "You don't like to say never, but--No." Which is what we had pretty much gathered already, but like I said, since it's come up....

The doctor summed things up by saying "I'm as pleased as punch with how things are going." Which is just a dorky phrase, but given what he was punch-pleased about, I'm not going to knock him :)