Today was much better than yesterday!

About a month ago, Maren had to go and have some blood work and an X-ray of her hands. This was because her pediatrician and I were worried about her size. She is only 2 1/2 inches taller than her sister and weights just 8 lbs. more.
Drawing blood was quite the experience, I will just say it looked like they were going to break her arm and I had my arms and legs wrapped around her. Her X-ray looked great, but her blood work was a different story. She had an elevated creatinine level, which is protein in the blood. This is prevalent in kids who have kidney problems.  The dr. Referred us to a renal specialist, she also said that this is the cause of Maren's slight size.
Yesterday, I was up early due to the fact that I had to got Kelsie to the airport by 7:30 am. I then ran home and grabbed Maren for appointment,  with the kidney doctor. It was up at University Hospital. The doctor informed me that Mare had a .72 creatinine level which meant that her Kidney was not cleaning her blood properly. We have known that her left kidney is shot, but thought that the right was doing the job for both perfectly well, never assume (my big lesson). The Dr. Informed me that Maren has level 3 chronic kidney disease. She said that Maren needed to start on growth hormones, which means a sot everyday! Still unbelievable to me that this will be a part of life for the next 9 to 10 years. This is about all that I grasped from the appointment, she sent us back over to Primary's for more blood work. A little better experience this time, but not by much!
I ran home and picked up kids from school, did homework, piano lessons, science fair, and young women's. put the kids to bed, then spent half the night researching kidney disease. Not pretty! I read the worst stuff and was very frightened and was praying for a miracle. I made myself physically sick worrying over it all. I got to bed about four in the morning. When I woke this morning, I realized that Maren had climbed in at some point, so I spent a small amount of time cuddling.
I had to keep myself very busy today while waiting for the result from the latest blood draw. When the call came I took good notes. First of all, her numbers were better ( this is more for me as a journal, GFR 80 60-90 is normal Maren should be at 64 for her height and muscle mass, so still a bit on the high side. Creatinine, .57 yay! This puts her down to stage 2 kidney disease, this could complicate her getting the growth hormone though the Dr. thinks due to her history, she will still be able to get it.h blood vessel level is low 19, should be higher than 20. So she will star taking a low dose of sodium citrate. Phosphorous level is slightly high 5.7, if she gets to 6 we will have to change her diet, limiting dairy and protein).  In case you didn't know this disease was caused by reflux in the left kidney, which caused urine to pool in her left kidney an would cause an infection, this led to scarring of her kidney. So her numbers look good this month, we will head back to the renal specialist in three months to check her functions again. She will now have growth checks with her pediatrician every two months. We will start the new meds and watch for high blood pressure and any swelling which indicates any kidney failure in progress. Whew!!
On a better note, Hannah gets braces in two weeks and Jonas is going to regional science fair!