Great News!

If you've followed for a while (last year at this time I posted this) then you know about how we have to go to St. John's every year to take Sarah to the Janeway to see the pediatric urologist.

We left on Tuesday morning to drive in. It's such a long drive and a little more challenging this year with baby Charlotte in tow.

Wednesday morning was "doomsday" for Sarah. I always take the time, as recommended, to explain the procedures in advance to give Sarah time to process and understand. Nevertheless, she was still very nervous and scared. Her memory is very good and no amount of explaining can take that away.

The regular ultrasound went very well. A breeze. Last year, Sarah freaked out just laying down on the table, regardless of the fact that an ultrasound doesn't hurt a bit. This year, she was actually quite interested in seeing how that magic camera could see inside her body.

The VCUG was a different story. We were in the waiting room and Sarah's name was called. The nurse approached her and said, "Are you Sarah?" to which she replied, "No! I don't want to go down there." Poor thing thought that if she didn't admit to being "Sarah" then she wouldn't have to walk down that hall. We got to the xray department and Sarah immediately remembered the room and the big machine and started to cry. The xray technician was amazing and patient and let Sarah choose which colour gown she wanted, which stickers she wanted, etc. All was going well until Sarah saw a "boy" and she started freaking out again. She said she didn't want that boy to see her private parts. That boy was the doctor coming in to do the xray himself. Sarah was assured that he would not see anything, only the girl nurse would see her to insert the catheter, etc. All was ok again. Until it was time to inject the dye to fill the bladder. Sarah had to go pee. This is necessary to get the results to see the direction of the urine but Sarah couldn't understand why she was supposed to pee on the xray table and wanted desparately to go to the bathroom. Oh my! What a fiasco!

After all was said and done, the doctor said he couldn't see any major reflux and thought there was definite improvement. What exciting news! But we still had to wait for confirmation of those results from our pediatric urologist. The appointment was on Thursday afternoon. We had to wait. We said our prayers of thanks anyways.

On Thursday, with Dr. Akhtar - who made Sarah cry just by walking in the room, regardless of being told the tests were all done - we were given confirmation of the wonderful news. In previous years, Sarah's reflux had progressively gotten worse to a level 3-3.5. This year, it had improved to a level ONE! This means no more daily medication and a full TWO years before we have to go back to the Janeway to follow up.

When we went back to our apartment, Sarah immediately threw her medicine in the garbage. She was very excited about that part. And we thanked God for being able to fix little girls and their broken parts :)

Thank you to those of you who have kept us in your thoughts and prayers. We are very happy to be home.