Sunday, February 08, 2009

appointment update

Last week we had a nice long day at UCLA medical center. Harper had two appointments and we were also there because Tom's mother had several appointments because she is having a pituitary tumor removed on Friday.
About 6 months ago Harper was diagnosed with kidney reflux. This problem was causing her to have frequent urinary tract infections and requires her to take a low dose of antibiotics every day. We found out from her tests last week that the reflux is resolving itself! We are so excited. She is still on the low dose of antibiotics since she has had a recent infection (though the urologist said that it is very possible that the sample was just contaminated), but we are going back in 6 more months to find out if we can take her off the antibiotics completely. The urologist said that it is very unlikely that the reflux gets better this fast when the patient has a duplicated system (that is where you have two ureters on one side instead of just one), so we are feeling very lucky. Hopefully the tests in a few months will show that she is all better. Now we are just waiting to hear back about a kidney ultrasound that will tell us if Harper has any scarring around her kidneys caused by the infections that she has had.

A few months ago Tom's Mom went in for an MRI to see if they could find out anything new about her epilepsy. Instead they found a large, benign tumor in her brain that was not causing her seizures, but that would potentially cause her to lose her vision. Luckily she only lives about 90 minutes away from UCLA where there is a team of three doctors who works together to remove these tumors and on Friday she is going to have it removed. We are just hoping that everything goes well and are glad that we live close enough to be able there for the surgery and attend her appointments with her.
On a brighter note, Harper has been fantastic lately. She is finally gaining some mobility and is rolling and scooting all over the place. She can crawl to the side and go backwards, but she hasn't quite figured out how to go forward yet. Any day now . . . I guess I better baby proof the apartment.
Harper sticks her tongue out like this when she's concentrating. So funny.Here's Harper in her dress before church this morning. Apparently I'm not as interesting as her fingers because she didn't want to look at me, but she looked so cute in her little dress :)

3 comments:

The Maucotel's said...

Yay she is scooting! Braden actually just started scooting (forward) a couple days ago. How fun!

Jan said...

Great news about Harper! Hope all goes well with Tom's mom!

Luke and Tiff said...

She is so cute! Hope everything continues improving with Harper and that Tom's mother's surgery is successful.