Christina Update: Bladder Stones

Our sweet little Christina had a bit of a medical whirlwind this summer and fall. Amid our moving, selling and remodeling, Christina had some excitement of her own! Back in August I posted about her being in the hospital with a kidney infection and a series of UTIs that we could not get rid of. She would get sick and then she would go on antibiotics and feel better and once the course had finished, the infection would be right back but worse. This went on for several months. And she was seemingly miserable, as you could imagine the poor little girl! So to further investigate the cause we tested her kidneys and had x-rays done. It turned out that one of her kidneys had reflux which often can cause infection. This is what her doctors suspected they would find. What they did not expect was what was in her bladder!

This x-ray was what they took when they were looking at her kidneys. On the very bottom is a rounded out triangle which is he bladder. The bladder is supposed to be empty most of the time unless you have to pee. But Christina's was FULL of stones. From what the doctors have told me, this is very uncommon in someone that doesn't eat anything orally and especially since her diet is only baby formula in a g-tube. Just a few days after discovering the stones, Christina had surgery to have them removed and she did wonderfully and was home within 24 hours!

For those that like medical stuff, these are the stones. All 27 of them! They were the size of corn kernels up to the size of marbles!

These stones likely carried lots of bacteria and we do not know what the stones are made of yet. They must be made of a mineral (or something) from her formula that her body does not metabolize. We knew her metabolic rate and functions had issues, since she isn't really growing (She's still under 20 pounds. Well, she's probably even lighter now that those stones are out!) The next goal is to figure out what the stones are and if we can prevent them from developing again. 

Since the stones have been removed she has been so much happier and seems to play and sit up more. We imagine she was in quite a bit of discomfort and pain from them. But she is a happy girl again! (She still hates the light, so she's happy if she's in the dark!)

Renovations to New Home - Kitchen

Over the summer we bought a new house to better accommodate our family. We were sad to sell our first home, but we are happy to be in this next chapter. We love the bones of this house and the layout. But nearly every surface in the house we have already changed or plan to change in the near future. Much of the remodeling from the previous owners is frightening and must be fixed or taken out. Additionally the house was filthy from the previous owners and their pets. Before we even moved into the house the first things we did were to majorly clean the house, then we replaced the carpeting in all the bedrooms and then we gutted the kitchen to the drywall. After gutting and redoing the kitchen we moved in. But we still have lots of projects!

This was the kitchen when we bought the house. Though the kitchen appears to not be that bad in the photos, in person it was a very sketchy DIY project with very cheap materials.

Where possible we have tried to save money by doing what projects we can on our own. So Brian and my dad took on gutting the kitchen! It only took them a few hours!

I consider myself to be a very decisive person. I picked out my wedding dress after trying on two dresses and I decided I wanted to marry Brian after two weeks of dating him. (But I waited to propose until four weeks!) But I'll tell you, picking out kitchen features is way harder than picking a forever husband! We decided early on that we both liked a white cabinet kitchen so we went off of that. But there are so many choices to consider when doing a kitchen (materials, layout, style, size of island, type of appliances, flooring, lighting, hardware, water filtration system, pot filler or not (this was our biggest debate!), and on and on). And after agreeing on the white cabinets we didn't agree on anything else! We would "argue" looking over Pinterest boards and we went to the stone yard at least 10 times! These photos are mid-project (we hired this part out!)

And here is the almost done kitchen and the state it is in now. We still need to decide on pendant lights, flooring, paint and install (or rather have installed) the 200 pound hood vent. If you are curious about what we finally did decided on: white shaker cabinets, black granite on the outer counters and carrara marble on the island, marble back splash in herringbone pattern, and stainless steel pulls and appliances. 

Our next major project is the flooring throughout the house. All the bedrooms have carpet and the bathrooms have tile. We plan on doing some type of wood through the main floor of the house. It will happen as soon as we can decide! The picture shows the horrific floors as they are now. More to come on this.