Kidney Update

So I dragged my weary (not to mention bruised and sore) butt to get my renal ultrasound this morning after I got off from work. The ultrasound tech told me that she didn't see any stones (I didn't expect her to since they've never seen them on ultrasound, only on CT scan). I went up, checked in, and sat in the doctor's office looking through car and golf magazines with Jack while I waited another hour for my doc to arrive and start his day.

He looked at the ultrasound and spoke with the radiologist, and he told me that it could have been a smaller stone that I was able to pass already, or it's moved down further to where they can't see on ultrasound. He said that my kidney looked slightly dilated and that I had the mildest hydronephrosis (he said it's nothing compared to what I had when I had the 2 large stones blocking my ureters). He said that pregnancy can cause hydronephrosis by the uterus getting bigger and naturally causing some obstruction to the ureters, but I told him that the gestational sac was only 1cm on ultrasound, and he said that the uterus is already growing even if the sac isn't that large yet. He told me that I'd have to talk to my OB or RE about what I can take for pain (I am sure it's only tylenol allowed at this point), and that I would kind of have to deal with it at this point. He said the only other option is to put a stent in, and he would have to do it rather blindly since he can only visualize so far with the scope, and it would be a really uncomfortable procedure for me. The stent was difficult to keep in after my surgery 3 years ago and that was only for almost a week (I had to have him remove it because I couldn't stand running to the bathroom every 5 minutes to pee an ounce at a time!). I'll skip that thank you very much!

So, my current plan is to drink as much as I can, as often as I can until I either deliver or get sick (in which case we'll go back to our plan of a long term IV to keep me well hydrated). The doc is supposed to call back in my prescription for my urocit-K which is basically a bunch of lemons packed into some horse pills to keep my pH of my urine alkalinized which makes it harder for me to form stones. I also have to be really careful with my sodium intake as higher sodium is associated with increased stone formation in cystinuria. Yay for me, LOL.

I want to ask my nurse at what point I can use a heat pack on that left part of my back. I've avoided using my heating pad at all because I wasn't sure if that (or my fever, or the two glasses of iced tea I had at dinner one night) had anything to do with why we didn't get pregnant for our fresh cycle, and I'm truly afraid to use it. I really haven't had much back pain until these last few days, so I was doing fine without it, but I'm wondering if I could take a smaller microwaveable heat pack and use that intermittently for this back pain. I'll call her next week and ask.

Thank you for the prayers that everything would be ok. I just continue to pray that this pregnancy will progress normally, and the baby will be healthy. Our next ultrasound is June 6th and Jack will be in school which is fine. I wanted to tell him then, but the office we're going to for the ultrasound is really funny about bringing kids with you (sensitivity to the other IFer's which I totally get). I figure if we see a heartbeat, we can tell him that night, and then our first trimester ultrasound to look at the nuchal translucency (which if I remember right is like 10-12 weeks-ish) we will definitely take him to. The baby will resemble more of a baby/alien then anyway, so it will be more believable to Jack then looking at what resembles a grain of rice on the 6th.