Answers, and yes....surgery

Ben got into a kidney specialist and we FINALLY got some answers to these horrible attacks he has been having for the past four years. Lately they have been closer together and more severe. It has been so sad to watch and so painful for him to go through. We were so sure it was his gallbladder...wrong.

There is a tube that runs from your kidney to your bladder. In Ben's case, he has a random blood vessel in the way of that tube (from birth) that is pinching the tube and causing his kidney to lose function and slowly die. Yeah, kinda scary.

His kidney is more than double the size of his other one, and it is only functioning on about 25% of what it should be doing. Not good.

So, he has surgery scheduled for December 10th. Yup...two weeks away. 8 days before we drive to Idaho. The doctor wants to get down to business before any more damage can be done.
It will be a three hour surgery and he will stay overnight. The recovery is roughly two weeks before getting back to normal living.

It is kind of funny actually. Just the other day, we were driving past the hospital, and I told Ben that I hoped the next time we had to be there would be for the birth of this baby, and not for any other scary or terrible things. ha!

Neither Ben or I have ever had surgery or anything really major happen to us up until this year. We have both been pretty dang healthy people our whole lives. Now we are both spending the night in the hospital and going through surgery just 5 months apart. This is a year we will NEVER forget, but in some ways, wish we could.

They will be re-routing the tube that is blocked by the blood vessel. They are going to cut it and re-attach it to the other side of his bladder. Hopefully this will fix the problem and allow his kidney to shrink back to normal and start to heal.

We are happy to have answers. It stinks that it has gotten this bad, but at least there is a solution. It is also a good thing that we didn't discover it too late. That would result in him losing his kidney because, well, it would be dead.

It isn't a crazy huge life or death surgery, but it is no small thing either. It is a big deal to us. We are both nervous. I just hope all goes well and that Ben has a full recovery and never has to go through another attack again!