Let's start with saying that Max is doing great! His scrotum is still very swollen, but the doctors are thinking that surgery is not the route to go. They have done 4 ultrasounds now, I think. All four of them haven't shown neither a hydrocele or a hernia, BUT the urologists, surgeons, and nephrologists believe that there is a small communicating hyrdocele somewhere. Either that or a leak in the actual peritoneal membrane. They can put a dye into his dialysis fluid and do a CT scan while he is filling to find out where the hole is , but I don't know if they are planning on doing this or not. I know that all of this seems so scattered brained, but honestly everyone of the doctors that I have talked to over the last 5 days has been totally scattered brained since no one seems to know exactly what is going on.

The surgeon came up last night and explained to us that the membrane is sort of like skin, so a pretty thin layer. If they go in and try to sew the hole, they are actually risking more harm than good since they would actually be putting more little holes around the main hole. Make sense? So, I think from what I got out of what everyone has told me is that for right now we are just keeping an eye on it.

Here is a funny for you. They want us to ball up a bunch of gauze pads and elevate his scrotum so that "gravity" helps push the fluid back into the belly area. Let me tell you that this really just makes for a good laugh, because it doesn't work. Max would need to be left laying totally flat in his bed at all times. Meaning that we wouldn't be able to hold him. Also keep in mind that whenever Max is laid flat, his lungs fill up with fluid. He has been elevated in his bed for as long as I can remember. So, the nurses are doing it to make the doctors happy :o)

The nephrology team came in today to let me know that Max was going to be in the hospital for a very long time (months) since they can't get him on the cycler successfully (right now he will have to be on the manual setup). So I asked them if they meant until his transplant. The nephrologist didn't want to admit this, but he couldn't say no either. His hesitant response was, "I wouldn't say for that long." ANYWAY, as my eyes filled with tears his wonderful nurse, Tanya, jumped in to argue. So, very long story short, they said that if we can get home nursing care for 5 days a week for 12-16 hours a day they would agree to it. They also said that as long as we had a good support system at home, that they would agree. Their main concern is that I would go insane being in the house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week having to fill and drain Max every hour around the clock. So we got the discharge coordinator and told her the scoop. She will be working on getting this arranged tomorrow. His dialysis nurse is also on the prowl of getting some training classes set up so that we can learn how to do the manual PD :o) Don't tell anyone that I said this, but even a caveman can do it! So, if you got my gist, I WILL NOT ALLOW Max to stay in that hospital room until he is 12-15 months old. My son is not learning to crawl at Children's Hospital. I will not let it happen.

I'll keep you all posted! Enjoy the rest of your work week!