Day Surgery

Sarah has been getting bladder infections fairly regularly for the last couple of years, and we finally were able to see a specialist at the Children's Hospital in Calgary about this a couple of weeks ago.  He thought that she might have a condition called reflux where the urine in the bladder was going back up the ureters up toward her kidneys.  I was told that there were two options, either a test to see if this was the case, or a day surgery to see if this was the case and then have the chance to fix the problem right then.  We chose the day surgery option because I thought it would be better to have her not go through a procedure while she was aware of what was going on, and because they would be able to repair the valves while at the same time.  They told me that it would take about 2 months to get in and that they would call to book the surgery later that day.  I was surprised to hear that there had been a cancellation for the following Friday, and that we could get in so quickly.  It worked out that Mindy was going to be at the same hospital on the same day with Tyler for a dentist appointment, so we decided to go up the night before and stay in a hotel rather than get up really early, since Sarah's surgery time was 9:30am.  Tyler's appointment wasn't until 12:30, but there are some great play areas to play at, and so they came early to drop us off and then went to play for a while. 

We got all checked in at 9:30, but then had to wait until just after 11am before they were ready for her.  Sarah did not like her pajamas or her bracelet, and was pretty hungry because she was fasting, but did fairly well considering.

 I was able to come right into the OR and stay with her until she fell asleep.  They just had a mask that she breathed in and it only too a minute for her to be out.  The procedure they did was called a Bilateral Sting -- it's an acronym for something, I just have no clue what though.  While they were doing the surgery, they found something interesting.  Sarah has two ureters coming from each kidney instead of one.  The doctor said it was pretty rare, but that it wasn't a problem to have them, but that it definitely contributed to the problem of having the bladder infections.  They were able to inject something called Deflux, that created a barrier to prevent the urine from travelling back up the ureters, and we were told that this one treatment should fix the problem.

 It took Sarah a while to come out of the anesthetic, and she was a little concerned when she woke up and saw that I was gone, but she came around and was up to eating a popsicle soon after.  The timing worked out great, because just as we were finished and went to go find Mindy, she was just finishing up Tyler's appointment.  Tyler had fun giving her a ride out to the car in the wheelchair they insisted she had to be in.  I was glad that I didn't have to carry her all the way out to the van!

Sarah had a bit of a hard time with some nausea, vomiting and a fever for the next day or so, and we ended up taking her back into the ER here in Lethbridge on Sunday night.  They thought she might have a bit of an infection, so she is back on antibiotics, but hopefully she will be on the mend soon.  We are glad that we were able to get in so soon, and get the problem fixed, hopefully once and for all!