Bladder

You learn a lot when you have kids.  But sometimes you learn stuff that you never wanted to learn about.  

A friend is almost done with school to become an ultrasound technician and needed a child to practice on for her class.  So Joel volunteered.  Colin wanted to but she needed someone younger. So Joel, Norah and I went and we got to see inside Joel's body.  He thought it was really cool.  And so did I.  It was a lot like watching a baby ultrasound and unfortunately I'm not pregnant because now would be the perfect time so I could get all the free ultrasounds I wanted :) But she checked out his kidneys and then his bladder. The picture below is his bladder.  I commented to Joel that hey look at all that pee in your bladder.  But she commented that the gray stuff  between the black blob and white stuff wasn't his pee - she called it sludge and that she hadn't seen it in children that young.  She mostly saw it in older people in their gallbladders.  Basically that big black circle is his bladder full of pee.  Its SO much smaller when the bladder is empty. But she was going to check with her professor and let me know what they said. 

So she sent a text on Monday saying that it was sludge in his bladder and started asking questions.  So I started answering and she was sending the info to her sister in law who is a urologist.  And when the urologist said that I should go see my pediatrician thats when I started really worrying.  Because when you google sludge in urinary bladder it only brings up rabbits. Go figure. I made an appointment with our pediatrician who thought I was crazy.  Imagine the conversation:  well Joel seems to be fine but a friend found sludge in his bladder so we want to check it out...." but at least she referred us to a pediatric urologist and by that time my friend had sent me the bladder picture to explain to the urologist. 

  

So we went to the childrens hospital today and saw the doctor.  She understood perfectly what I was talking about and after some tests figured out he has dysfunctional elimination syndrome where he never fully empties his bladder or bowels. He typically only poops once a week. It has always been normal for him since he was a baby. And when he poops all summer in my flower beds seems like a great thing at first.But its not.His bowels are pressing on his bladder which makes his bladder not fully empty and then causing the sludge to build up. Its funny to me that sludge is the scientific name.  He is peeing out the sludge (he's been telling me he's peeing dirt or buggers which I shouldve listened to more before this) So now we have to retrain his body so that his bladder doesn't keep making the sludge which could get into his kidneys and cause a lot of problems. Which is so much harder than it sounds.  Its like potty training on steroids and with my honey badger of a son will be difficult.  I almost panicked when she mentioned it could take two years and told her this is our very strong willed child.  But it could be worse and after all the possible horrible scenarios that I had thought of the past few days, this will seem like a breeze.