Woken up by the alarm clock at 7:00am. Off to Nicosia at 08:15am. 9:10am we are in Makarious Hospital…
We found the X-Ray department pretty fast, although noone seems to speak English in that place. No queue what-so-ever. Payed 22 CYP. “Please enter”.
Continue reading Some good kidney news
It’s time again to take Maxim for a routine pediatrician check. And so we did.
The boy is growing. He measured at 73 cm in length, while 9.5 kg of weight. That’s a real improvement of almost a kilogram since last month. Obviously, introducing a small yogurt pitstop in the afternoon and an even smaller yogurt pitstop in the evening helped his diet.
For the next month he will have a new dish to try – yolk of a boiled chicken egg. We’ll start with 1/8, then with 1/4, then with 1/2, and then probably with the whole thing. Since he eats meat pretty good, we will have to give him egg only every other day.
We also discussed the two issues that are oustanding for a few month now – facial nerve and the kidney.
For the kidney we have another test scheduled in Nicosia, Makariou Hospital on coming Thursday. Some “painted” liqued will be introduced into Maxim’s bladder via catheter and than monitor will tell if any of this liqued goes back to the kidney. Hopefully it will stay in the bladder and come out the normal way. The procedure is pretty standard. The two downfalls are the catheter, which I hear is somewhat painful to insert and a minor X-Ray radiation for the monitor.
Because of this radiation dose, it was decided to skip one test for the facial nerve. Instead we will do a more advanced (read: more expensive) test that requires no radiation at all. It also usually provides better results than anything else out there.
These are all news. I’ll have some updates as we go. But most of it should come in about one month from the next visit to Dr.Simos. Where Maxim will get his next vaccination too. Poor kid. And I hear that he has it easy…
Dr.Simos called Olga and told her that he finally managed to talk to Dr.Avraam from Nicosia. It turns out that Maxim’s kidney tests are not as good as we hoped that they would be. The functionality of the kidneys is outside of the safe range. One kidney performs at 58%, while the other one is only at 42%. It’s this latter kidney which is worrying. It should be at least at 45%.
The danger of this situation is in the possibility of urine getting back into the kidney. If this happens Maxim will be in a lot of trouble, not to mention pain. So, obviously, some action needs to be taken.
Another test will be scheduled in the near future to study the situation more and to see how dangerous it really is. Unfortunately, Olga didn’t catch the name of the test while on the phone with Dr.Simos, so I can’t give you any details yet. Neither can I search the web for more information. But rest assured that we’ll be talking Dr.Simos shortly.
Here are some parenting, and health and medicine related bookmarks. These all were found in the process of studing nuclear scans and their affect on the baby’s health.
Continue reading Daily del.icio.us bookmarks
To celebrate Maxim’s 6 month birthday today, we gave him the geekiest present ever – the nuclear scan of his kidneys. That’s far from your average baby toys and clothes. The procedure involves some of the most advanced technology in the nuclear medicine. And there was more involvement in the process than just watching or laying in some scanning machine. The radioactive substance had to be physically injected into Maxim’s body two hours before the scan.
Anyway, both Olga and I were scared and worried getting him this present, but everything worked out good. The procedures weren’t painful or harmful in any way. Maxim didn’t even cry once during the long day. He was even happy with his present – he laughed and smiled often, touching the scanning machine and playing with the drain off his leg.
Olga and I got relaxed after we realized how simple the thing actually is. We made lots of jokes, calling Maxim names like “nuclebaby” and “chernokid”. Since all the radioactive stuff will come out via natural ways, we were kidding about “nuclear waste dump” in his dipers.
Gladly, we are back home. Maxim feels fine. And we are expecting the results of the scan in about one week time.