Worried Sick

I thought once we survived Spring break that everything would fall back into place and everything would be hunky-dory again. Instead, something worse is threatening to destroy us. Ahren is sick. With what? I wish I knew. Here is the background.

A few weeks ago I noticed that Ahren was drinking a lot. And with drinking a lot comes peeing a lot. At first i didn't think anything of it. Then we began struggling to contain his night-time pee. He sleeps hard, ten to twelve hours a night. He has never been consistently dry at night, so he has always slept in a pullup. Well, a pullup was nothing compared to the tide of pee. We stopped all liquids at dinner time, had him pee before bed, etc. We had to resort to a size 6 diaper with a super-maxi night-time feminine pad inside it, and a pullup over it. Only then did the sheets stay dry. That is a LOT of pee. As in abnormal amounts of pee!

So I called the doctor and they decided to do some blood work. (Remember the whole sausage stealing incident? That was the day they did his bloodwork) I got a call on Wednesday that the doctor needed to talk to me. I hadn't heard anything and I had assumed all was normal and not thought a bit about it. Now I was worried. Before the doc called me I went to their office and got a copy of the results. Not good. His kidneys are all out of whack, his glucose way too low, and a protein that should have been made by his muscles was really low. His urine also showed protein and ketones, signs his kidneys were damaged and his muscles starving.

Chris and I took him back yesterday. His urine was worse. He is spilling a large amount of protein (30 mg/dl, normal is zero, above 10 is serious) and ketones. It looked milky and smelled awful. We have 4 days of testing scheduled. He had ultrasounds of all the organs in his abdomen this morning. We will be doing lots more blood work and a 24-hour urine, rushing all the results back. Then we will be loading up all the results and heading to Texas Childrens for a consult with the nephrology department, the neurology department and possibly the endocrinology department.

Today he is lethargic. Spent 2 hours lying on the couch with a blanket before his ultrasound appointment. Had to carry him through the parking lot and then he just laid in the hospital bed while they did the extensive ultrasound tests. Now it's lunchtime and he is lying on a blanket on the floor. This is NOT like him. He is an active 4 year old boy! I have a call into the doctor.

Anyone out there have knowledge about kidneys and kidney failure in kids?????