ONE WEEK POST SURGERY

It's been 7 days since Jonah had his bladder surgery.  

We came home Saturday. 

Saturday through Tuesday were rough.  He was in pain from bladder spasms which are common after stent insertion and catheter insertion. 

We started a medicine to prevent these spasms on Monday evening so things did start to get better by Wednesday.  

In fact, the past 2 nights, Jonah 

(and I) has slept all night.  

Jonah is tolerating the suprapubic catheter like a champ!  The care of it for us isn't too tricky- just keeping things as sterile and clean as possible.  

Since Jonah is home most the time, we are actually fastening the catheter bag over his pants so that the skin on his upper thigh doesn't get too irritated from the bag's fastening strips.  

We change the dressing for the tube insertion site by Jonah's belly button each evening.  So far, that area is looking good and clear of any infection or irritation.

We definitely realize that any progress we made in  bathroom training these past few years might be severely set back.  Jonah feels the urge to pee, but now physically can't because the urine is diverted right into the bag.  This goes against everything we have tried to teach him about letting the potty out in the toilet instead of in the pull-up.  I think Jonah is also stressed/scared of going #2 because of the bladder spasms he experienced the first few days post-surgery.  I'm afraid he is associating that pain with trying to go #2.  

If I think about these setbacks too much, I get very sad and panicked for how to help Jonah get back what he/we worked SO HARD to learn about bathrooming. May sound silly, but lots of prayers being offered for help in this area for us. 

Jonah goes in for an ultrasound on Tuesday, 9-15 to see how the dialation in his kidneys looks.

We are hoping there is some reduction in size of both kidneys.

We are also hoping the doctor will change the catheter from a bag to a valve on that day so that things will start to get back to normal for Jonah.  

However, the challenge for Jonah once the catheter is on the valve setting is he will have to show the doctor that he can void completely and empty his bladder on his own.  

The valve will be a safety/precaution to prevent another kidney dialation/infection in case he doesn't do this.  

If he doesn't empty completely, then we are going to have to figure out what is keeping Jonah from doing this.  

I feel like this is going to be a difficult problem to fix, but one that is absolutely necessary because Jonah cannot keep putting this type of stress on his kidneys (or his parents...)

My motto is one step at a time though so I'm not going to start worrying about that step yet.

Let's first see what the ultrasounds shows us on Tuesday.  Hopefully good news!