DMSA - What's It All About?

In March we made another appt at Rady's to have a DMSA renal (kidney) scan completed on Olivia.  

DMSA stands for dimeecaptosuccinic acid.  It is a scan that gives us a baseline for Olivia's kidney function. We are checking to see if there are any places on her kidneys that are not healthy or places that she has kidney reflux (kidneys not emptying on their own/ getting backed up).  We need to know about these things now so we can monitor kidney damage and avoid potential future complications.

A radioactive isotope got injected into Olivia that they will follow and see what area of her kidneys it attaches itself to.  The isotope is created to attach only to healthy kidney cells - so if it is all glowing that is a good thing!   

They injected Olivia with a radioactive isotope around 11am.  They had to strap her down, including her head - she wasn't the biggest fan - and injected her with the isotope.  Dad and Grandma were there for that part.  Dad said it was hard to watch her held down but she was a champ through it all.  Then everyone left the hospital.

At 2:30pm Grandma brought Olivia back to Rady's for the second part - the actual scan.  They met Mom at the radiology dept.

The scan takes about 20 minutes and has Olivia on her tummy the entire time.  Grandma and Olivia worked so hard on 20 consecutive minutes of tummy time prior to the test.  We knew this was going to be the hard part and prepped accordingly.  Thanks Grandma!

For the scan they strapped Olivia face down from the chest down - no head this time, phew!  You can see her strapped down here:

We started off in the dark but she was not all that interested in falling asleep so we gave up on that and decided to read and play instead.

When she first slid back into the machine she kind of freaked out and started crying.  She was able to lift her head but had to be super careful she didn't bump the machine that was inches away.  That caused even more frustration.

When the machine was tilted at the angle in the pic below she responded the best because she could push her head up and stretch a bit.

To get her to calm down we sang to her a bunch.  Baby Beluga (thank you Julia, Tom & Henry!) is always a winner as well as the ABC song.  We sang those over and over until she calmed down.  Then we brought out books and read to her to keep her attention.  It worked much better than anticipated!

After 20 mins the tech came over and said "almost done!" - music to a mom's ears!  She hadn't cried since the first 5 minutes and we were in the home stretch.  Go Livie go!!

But then she started to get fussy....  Haha.

We turned our attention back to singing and talking and she was distracted enough to get the job done :)

20 mins later and this is her proud girl smile :D. She also got her very first sticker!  Princess Aurora!

Now for the results:

100% kidney function!!!!!!!!!!!

WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dr Chaing said 100% is not normal for SB kids so yay!

What does this mean?

The 100% is because she is not having extra pressure in her kidneys and therefore her bladder is not backing up into her kidneys.  This is great news because we don't have a whole lot of worry about her bladder not fully expelling and hurting her kidneys.  

While she will be able to empty her bladder it also probably means though that she probably won't have a lot of bladder control.

If given a choice between kidneys not functioning and a lifetime of diapers obviously kidney function is what we would pick.  It's just that neither is a choice anyone wants to make for their child.  So yay for kidneys!  Now comes the life lessons associated with not being able to control her bladder.

Be Happy.  Laugh.  Enjoy Chaos.