Big News from our recent trip to NYC!

Ok, so after a month of waiting I can finally make my blog post. The first week of April we drove to New York City for what we thought would be Gabrielle's pre-op appointment for her upcoming surgery. That Monday morning Bart, Gabby and myself drove into New York City in the snow... CRAZY I know! When we arrive for her appointment that morning we headed to radiology for her usual renal ultrasound. He wanted to see recent images of her kidneys and bladder to make sure that everything was looking healthy and there no kidney reflux. Since she has kidney that is exactly parallel to her bladder (this is a called pelvic kidney) she runs risk of urine running backwards from her bladder back into the kidney. This tends to cause kidney infections which as of yet she has never had one. Thank you sweet baby Jesus! Once done with the ultrasound we headed to Urology clinic to see Dr. Alam. We had just sat down in the waiting area and here he comes to get us himself, just one of the many reasons I love him. He always has a huge smile on his face when he greets us. :) The other part of our appointment was to teach us how to catheter Gabrielle. To prep her bladder for surgery and get it as healthy as possible he wants us to catheter twice daily, during the evening catheter time we also flush her bladder with Gentamicin solution. This is an antibiotic solution that thankfully we are able to make at the pharmacy where I work. Since Gabby was born with her bladder on the outside and it stayed that way for 3 years she naturally carries bacteria in her bladder. If allowed the bacteria can overgrow and give her urinary tract infections... basically she constantly has a bladder infection. This overtime makes the bladder walls deteriorate and weaken. Flushing her bladder with the Gentamicin keeps the bacteria at bay and allows her bladder to become healthy. Now that I have explained all that to you I can tell you why I have postponed my blog post for a month. We are sitting there catching up with Dr. Alam and talking about the upcoming surgery and her surgery date is mentioned. The surgery was scheduled for June 5th. He says "Well, I have something to share with you both but you aren't allowed to post anything about it because I know several of my other families follow your story. There is a chance that I'm leaving New York." At this point Bart and I are both like "PLEASE! Tell us you are moving south?!" He laughs because we made such a big fuss when he moved from Cincinnati to New York City. I'll be honest I didn't think we could pull New York City off. I mean we do have family in New Jersey and we love them dearly but I'm not one to want to burden anyone for any length of time. I was not looking forward to spending the summer in New York. 1) It so expensive! 2) Like I said earlier, I didn't want to barge in on Uncle Mark and Aunt Darlene for an entire month. 3)  We were going to have to leave Avery behind for at least half the time. He shares with us that over the last year since we have seen him that a few different hospitals have contacted him on the hunt for urologist. There were 3 in particular that he mentioned: Seattle, New Orleans (Dr. Ortenburg, head of urology is retiring), and Charleston. It felt like an eternity before he finally stated that Charleston was really after him big time. He said that he had already been on one interview there and had a second one scheduled for the week after we were there. When he went this time they were going to be looking at houses for he and his wife. I was so excited! It was hard to contain it and not get my hopes up. He said that he would let me know when he got back home from the trip. I waited the whole next week waiting to hear from him and nothing. So finally Saturday morning April 14th, I texted him and basically said "Well?" He said the hospital is wonderful. I have not signed a contract yet but that will be following shortly. Your family is the first to know to not say a word. Then this morning I see this on facebook...

Y'all!! I'm over the moon excited about this move. He will be just 13 hours away instead of 23! I've already be scoping out the Charleston Ronald McDonald house and it looks really nice. 

With all of this being said... what is up next for Gabby? Well, after discussing his potential move in length the day of the NYC appointment the following was decided. Once the surgery is performed we would have had to be at the hospital for up to 2 weeks. Then there will be 3 follow up appointments. Her surgery was originally scheduled for June 5, which would have put us having surgery in NYC and then all of her follow ups at the new hospital in Charleston. He expressed that he was very pleased with how Gabrielle was growing and that her bladder was currently pretty healthy and with the added Gentamicin it would of course get better. He said that he was completely fine with postponing her surgery. I asked him if he realized that we would have to put it off an entire year until her next summer break due to the extensive recovery time and he said that was fine. It just gives her more time to get as healthy and big as she can get. So... unless any emergencies happen we are postponing her next surgery until June of 2019. And trust me Gabby was more than happy about this, lol! Since we have gotten back home I have continued to catheter her and everything is going very well. She has gotten used to it and just lies and reads a book while I cath her and it takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes. 

The rest of our trip we were able to spend time with family and site see a little bit. We spent Tuesday picking up bagels from our favorite bagel shop and we drove to Hoboken to see Carlo's bakery and had a snack and shakes at Johnny Rockets. 

Later in the week we all (including Granny Dolores) went to the 9/11 memorial. It is really something to see if you ever make a trip to New York you need to put that on your list of places to go. We took the guided tour and they tell you all kinds of stories about some of the people that were there the day the towers fell. Then on Friday we left a 130am  and drove the whole 23 hours home in one day with Bart and I trading off. We got to see some beautiful country on the drive up and on the way home. The girls were excellent the entire trip (ipads are wonderful things, lol!)

Family picture in front of the Oculus.

Granny and Gabby in the big city 

My two little loves outside of the 9/11 museum