Presleigh Goes on a Date...

We've become connoisseurs lately of free concerts. Partly because, well, they're free.

Our new hobby began last week when Mommy and Daddy really needed a date night on which Presleigh could tag along. In checking out the local listings on the web, they found a "concert in the park" was starting in about 30 minutes (that's ten minutes after they discovered they had nothing planned and just enough time to drive across town to). We found ourselves in a local "Old Town" section of the North Atlanta suburb of Norcross, a place where the train still comes rumbling through the now repurposed train depot - a cool restaurant with AWESOME fried grouper and our first foray into fried green tomatoes.

There, we ran into people we hadn't seen, quaint houses with spacious wrap around porches (our fave), plenty of playground and park for Presleigh, and some cute (read: inexpensive) restaurants for Mommy and Daddy to be sickeningly romantic in. As usual, Presleigh made a huge splash with the locals, reaching a speed limit breaking 50 "adorable"s per hour.

Well, this week, with "great" Atlanta weather (read: mid-80s with humidity below 80%), we couldn't pass up continuing our new hobby. Besides, Mom wasn't available to babysit and we didn't have any tickets to the O.A.R. show at Verizon. We found ourselves in the old town section of Duluth, proximal to the same railroad from last week, just a few miles north.

The Gwinnett Symphony played a great show while Presleigh met puppies, little kids her size, and one of those cool, programmable fountains that she discovered to be a fun place to poke her fingers. Since she didn't have a swim diaper on, it was best that the fountain show wasn't playing... There, Presleigh met a nice little boy. No, it wasn't a date. I mean, if it was a date, Daddy chaperoned like a Papa should - a Papa-razzi! I'm not sure who this kid is, but the press wouldn't leave him alone. I wouldn't leave him alone with my Presleigh! Nice enough kid, but I don't know his peeps, you know?

What you miss from this picture (but, was captured below) is that the cute, little boy with her was eating a piece of pizza. When he joined her in exploring the fountain, he decided to put his pizza down behind him, which of course, he promptly picked back up and went to work on when the fountain fun was done...

Yummm... Pepperoni and Park Pizza!?

Ah, we'll give him a pass. Kids will be kids, right? 45 second rule? It was a great night for all, with a yummy dinner for Mommy & Daddy at a local hole-in-the-wall, plenty of fun pictures of Presleigh, and one more notch on the "free concert" belt.

Date night - gotta have it!

Today's Episode of the Tale of Presleigh Pina

Today, we got to meet with Super Doc. (For those just joining us: Dr. Smith is referred to as the Mac-Daddy of Pediatric Urology, and various other cool monikers. He's supervising Presleigh's case which began a few months ago when we discovered Presleigh had an extra ureter and that all of her ureters were, under certain circumstances, refluxing urine backward from her bladder to her kidneys)

Back to today's episode:
Dr. Smith is so chill and factual, he just kind of puts you at ease by talking in multi-syllabic medical terms that roll so easily off his tongue that you'd swear he's ordering breakfast...

Long story short, we got a look at Presleigh's "films" - the images from her recent kidney scan. It shows there is some scar tissue in one kidney from the UTI she had, but the short term effects of this only mean potential for more UTI's in the future and long term only means she could be at a higher risk for high blood pressure. (We'll be watching that in her diet anyway, since there's some kind of blood pressure madness on both Mommy and Daddy's sides of the fam.)

As far as surgery goes, we don't have much more to go on and won't until about March. The plan then is to do another VCUG (X-ray of the bladder, kidneys, and ureters) to see if Presleigh's body's growth has outpaced that of her ureters and the grade 5 reflux has come down to a grade 3 or so. In either case, Dr. Chillax is pretty confident surgery will be required. We're simply praying that God does a "what the heck?!" on her and the VCUG comes back "mysteriously perfect"...

For now, it's sticking to the regular low-dose antibiotics daily and just being a kid. She's running all around the apartment these days, chewing on everything she can with her 6 proud teeth, and as you see in this photo, inspecting the Dr.'s medical equipment for quality assurance. Who knows, with Mommy's nursing background and Daddy's sales background, perhaps she'll be a medical device saleswoman when she grows up...

Prayer Plan: First, thank all of you for your constant prayer, we've felt it. We're strong in the Lord and confident in the people He's assembled around her.
The best prayers for Presleigh are for miraculous restructuring of her ureters that only God can induce.

Pray that she stays as healthy as she is until the next VCUG and that the scan comes back showing no reflux at all.

Pray that Mommy and Daddy continue to stay plugged in to Jesus on a moment to moment basis so they don't get caught up in worry or any other useless misdirection of energy.

Pray for Presleigh's big sister, Brianna, as she spends the school year half a continent away with her biological Dad in Washington state.

Keep our dear Debbie Russell in your prayers as well while the Lord escorts her through her chemotherapy and kicks her cancer in the Jimmy.

How Long Does This Take?

Today was scheduled to be a DMSA Renal scan. Since Presleigh's ureters had been running two way traffic, four lanes, instead of one lane/one way, she wound up with a urinary tract infection several months ago, which is what revealed the ureter issue in the first place. The concern with a UTI is kidney damage, today's scan was designed to give us a look into the kidneys to see if there's been any scarring.

The appointment was set for 9AM, which means "you need to be there between 8 and 8:15 for check in and paperwork", right? Sure. That means, to get down GA-400 to the hospital in the thick of rush hour, you're going to need to leave at 7:30, no later, or you're in for big delays around exit 5 and the Perimeter. Fortunately, Daddy knew this and Mommy is constantly on time and we made it there early. Daddy wouldn't have minded much if that meant we would be taken in any earlier... Nah, it's not like getting a table at a restaurant, Pops. Nice try.

Nice scenery - Presleigh loved the fish tank in the lobby. She wasn't overly fond of not being able to eat from 5AM until the study was done, though... especially with all of those yummy fish in the tank!!! (Well, eating sushi is Mommy's deal and swallowing live goldfish is Daddy's gig, so we figured it might have at least gotten her gastric juices trickling...) God hit our "reset" button on the gratitude meter when we met a guy carrying cupcakes in to the doctors who worked on his daughter's brain tumor. "She would have been 5 years old today." Okay, Daddy cried a bit there. Thank You, Lord for our healthy child.

Long story short, what appeared to be a 9AM appointment was a 9:30 intravenous drip of renal tagged radioactive isotope, which takes 2 hours to accumulate, so they can do a 40 to 60 minute scan. Translation: The had to pump nuke juice into our precious baby so that her kidneys would light up on the x-ray machine long enough to take a time lapse photo of them. Simpler translation: "You're not getting out of here until after 1PM."

Had either of us known we'd be there for 6 hours, we'd have put in for a shift and a set of scrubs... But, God is faithful and He is our sustainer.

Presleigh wasn't nuts about the idea of the IV going into her arm. It reminded her of the last time she was here, which was a long five days for a baby of only 7 months (at the time). Today, at nearly 11 months, she was a brave little lady as they got her IV in. Plenty of crying, but still brave. She waited out the nuke drip while Daddy fought off nightmares of some Incredible Hulk/Spiderman side effects... "Snap out of it, Daddy!!!"

Once the IV push was done, it was off to see the big, scary machine. I don't know what the heck that thing is called, but it was big and it rolled, rotated, raised, and lowered. Back to the Dr. Bruce Banner nightmares... Having never had a child sedated before, Mommy and Daddy prayed and listened simultaneously as the doctors explained that "propofol is totally safe in the hospital". Apparently, it's only lethal if taken by a 50 year old King of Pop. This was well in bounds of being called "disconcerting".

However, the Lord comforted us as they administered the sedative, which knocked her out in a matter of seconds... alright... it was supposed to take effect in 4 to 5 seconds. Presleigh fought it like Arnold Schwarzenegger in "True Lies". Moments later, she did a backflip, took out the bad guy with an Uzi, and saved the world from nuclear destruction! ("Snap out of it, Daddy!!!") 40 minutes later, all done.

Now, we have a disc with weird x-ray images on it that we get to bring to Dr. Supermackdaddy-kidney-buster in a couple weeks so that he can tell us what's next for l'il Presleigh-poo. Meantime, Mommy and Daddy are wiped-out and taking the rest of the day to make sure she's unscathed otherwise. Mommy had appointments to meet with people this afternoon, but she really prayed it over and while she really wanted to keep her appointments, she knew it was more important to be here with Pres.

Presleigh seems well, a little fussy, a teeny bit disoriented still, but we're watching her like a hawk. We're optimistic, though. We know that God is fully in control and that however we move forward, he's got our back. Daddy's got some grieving to do, since his dear Nana passed last night at about 11:30 PM after dementia and failing health ran their course. She was 91 and will be missed greatly.