Good days for Hailey

Hailey has been seeing a physical therapist in San Diego since July. Her urologist sent us there to try biofeedback, where she helps train Hailey's pelvic floor muscles to release her urine the way it is supposed to. Three weeks ago, we saw the urologist and Hailey's awesome therapist came for the appt so we could all talk and figure things out together. Dr. Chiang's next idea was to try to temporarily close off the vesicostomy and fill her bladder. Then we would have her pee and see how well she emptied. We tried this using a catheter with a balloon to block it. Our first attempt didn't go very well. A lot of the water put in leaked out and Hailey couldn't pee with us all there. The plan was to try again with the therapist since she has an ultrasound machine and we can see if she emptied. The goal is to train Hailey's muscles to release the urine without her really pushing and straining to go. If she pushes and the bladder muscles don't relax and release the urine, then it will go back up into the kidneys.

We met with Hailey's therapist 2 weeks ago to try again. We took great care to minimize the number of times Hailey contracted her bladder muscles with the catheter in, so we reduced the leakage. We also put in less water. After we sat her on the potty, it only took a couple of minutes for her to pee. We did the ultrasound before and you could see how full she was. After she went, her bladder did shrink down and the therapist said it looked empty.

We went again a couple days ago and she did well. So we are going to be practicing this at home and again with her therapist in a couple of weeks. Her urologist wants to see if she can be success at emptying and then he wants to check for reflux again. We will be seeing him again at the end of next month.

This is all very encouraging. Hailey is such a trooper and I am so proud of her. I am very hopeful that we are going to figure out a long term plan with this doctor. We still don't know what that looks like yet. But he is staying on top of everything and is in frequent e-mail contact with Hailey's therapist. I love them both for how much they want to help our daughter!