The Reimplantation Fails
When we realized that Lizzie was still having infections after her bilateral reimplant, our first step was another VCUG. The results were not good. The surgery seemed to be a success, which meant that all of her “parts” were now in the right place. The problem was that she still had grade IV-V VUR. The doctors were stumped, her reimplant had failed for no obvious reason.
We immediately scheduled a video-urodynamics study (she was 11 months at this point). This would show us if there were any problems with her bladder that could be causing her VUR, which would make it secondary VUR. The test results surprised us all. We expected her to have significant bladder issues, with voiding and contractions. Instead we discovered that she has a huge bladder. And by huge, I mean giant, grand canyon sized bladder. An 11 month old’s bladder should hold between 60-90 mLs of fluid. At 350 mLs, they stopped the test for fear of doing damage. The amazing thing is that her bladder seemed to be working pretty well. She had very delayed voiding (obviously), but she voided almost to completion, which was great news. There was also some bladder wall thickening, which was not really what you want to see, but also not terrible.
So what did all of that mean? No one could really tell me. She still had VUR, and now it was believed that she had some significant bladder issues, and would require 2 more surgeries. One to inject Deflux into her ureters, and one to give her a vesicostomy.
