Kidney Stones and other issues

I just re-read my last post in early December and so much has changed with Sean since then! (Everyone else is doing about the same so I'm not going to update on all of them.)

Shortly after my last post, Gracie came home with rotavirus, a pretty severe stomach virus, and of course within a few days all 5 of us were sick. It was so awful - we hadn't done the "whole family sick at the same time" thing in a long time! UGH! Everyone came out of it okay, and we were surprised that Sean handled it better than Mark and I did (I think we were both pretty behind on sleep, which doesn't help.)

While the rest of us were sick about 24-48 hours and then fine again, Sean was mildly sick for about 12 hours and then fine for a couple of days, then sick again, then fine again, then sick again. I kept sending him to school because I thought he was better and then he'd throw up in the middle of the night again! I noticed that he kept vomiting in the middle of the night (he insisted on a bucket next to his bed for about 3 weeks) but I couldn't figure out a pattern at all.

Anyway, I called Sean's nephrologist and got some bloodwork done, and all his kidney tests came back normal. The Sunday of the Christmas program he did great at church and then doubled over in pain as soon as we got home, so I took him in to his pediatrician. He couldn't find anything wrong at all but since there were "crystals" in his urine the ped ordered a CT for Thursday.

We didn't get the results until we were already in Sioux Center, but apparently the CT did show several kidney stones! I still think it's weird for an 8-year-old to have kidney stones but all his doctors are pretty casual about it. The CT also showed a big crystal/stone in his appendix, which worried me a LOT since neither my dad nor I have an appendix anymore. The ped who told me about it said that if he threw up again while at my parents I had to bring him in to the local ER, so we ended up doing that on Sunday evening. I was very nervous that he would show some kind of infection and they'd want to take his appendix out, because his transplanted kidney is literally sitting right on top of where his appendix is! I don't want anybody but the transplant surgeons messing around in there and we were 300 miles away from the University at that point.

Fortunately he did not have any infection and all his labs were again normal. By this point all his regular doctors were gone for the holiday so we kind of just crossed our fingers and waited until Wednesday to start making phone calls again. His pediatrician spoke with several surgeons and recommended the old "wait and see" routine, which I always love (not!) and I finally spoke with nephrology this Monday, and they recommend the same thing.

They had also tested for CMV, which is another one of those viruses that is just another virus for normal people but can cause all kinds of trouble for transplant patients, and he was positive for that also. Nephrology is currently debating whether to do anything about it, but for now they recommend "waiting and seeing" on that too.

So.... long story short.... there is obviously something weird going on with Sean and we'd really appreciate your prayers for him right now. We are VERY grateful that we were able to have a good time with family over the Christmas break and that the worst thing that happened was a 1-hour trip to the Sioux Center ER. Don't get me wrong, watching Sean alternate between having a great time with his cousins and then puking his guts out was awful, but it definitely could have been a lot worse.

Right now none of his doctors have scheduled any follow-up so I guess we're just supposed to keep an eye on him and see if his pain/vomiting get better or not and go from there. Obviously if anything too exciting happens I won't be able to get online to write about it but I will update as soon as possible.

Have a blessed New Year!

Laurie