Pirate Sees a Lot of Doctors

Everyone,

He doesn't see as many as his cousin, cute little girl! But between all the well baby visits and his broken leg, I feel like we see a lot of doctors.

Today's doctor visit was a visit to the urologist at the children's hospital. Our regular pediatrician thought he might have a hernia in his testicles so off to the specialist! Today was the day we got to see what was going on.

First off, a fight with the pediatrician's office and the hospital office. I have a love/hate relationship with paperwork right now. I got it all worked out (after several calls) and into an exam room we go. Butterfly and Professor got to play at a friend's house this morning. Much more fun than the doctor's. PLUS, no one under the age of 12 is allowed into the hospital unless they are a patient. Hello flu!

Anyway, a med student was able to exam Pirate first. No hernia. I was happy about that. But he does have something called a hydrocele.

If you don't want to click the link, a hydrocele is basically fluid from the abdominal cavity that is draining into his testicle area. This is happening because as the testes drop in development, they make a hole in the abdominal wall to get to where they are supposed to be. Most of the time this opening seals up by the age of one and there is no problem. Pirate's did not. His is very slight. I think his doctor called it a "non-communicating hydrocele" which means that there is not a lot of fluid passing back and forth through this opening.

It's not painful. It's not harmful. It may or may not go away at this point. It will only go away for sure with surgery. To do the surgery or not is up to us. The doctor is willing to do it but it probably won't alter his quality of life if he doesn't have it. I'm glad it's not life threatening but being faced with this decision is a little daunting.

Juice and I talked about it a lot. I talked to my parents about it. (Juice's parents are in the MTC for their mission or he probably would have talked to them about it.) I think talking to my dad made my decision though. He had a double hernia when he was a teenager probably due to a hydrocele left untreated.

Pirate is getting the surgery.

It's a fast surgery. The doctor said it would only take an hour or so. He would do it in the surgical suites they have at his office. They would not give him any pain medication after the surgery and he would only have 3 or 4 stitches in two areas. My thought is it's better to fix this now while he is little. Before he ends up with a double hernia. Before he gets teased in the locker room because he looks different (and it does). Before he's old enough to really get the whole surgery aspect. It's a good idea.

The doctor will probably schedule it in March or April.

It was a big morning for Pirate and me. We celebrated with doughnuts. Yum!

Safire