Right Direction?

Interestingly, Austin’s creatinine (one of the key kidney numbers we wait for each week when we get his labs done) has been slowly going down. Which is good. It means that his kidney function is, if not returning to normal, at least improving.

Of course, for us, this makes any future decision even more difficult. I mean, it’s considerably easier to justify removing a kidney that looks bound to fail, that’s hanging on by a mere thread and about to die off on its own anyway. It’s another story altogether to take out an organ that seems to be doing just fine — or, as in Austin’s case, fine enough.

It’s not a huge jump or anything, and is still in the too-high range, but much closer to normal than it was three weeks ago, or than it’s been for the past few months. This is no guarantee of anything so we’ll just watch and see if this trend continues. His potassium and phosphorous levels have also been “great” (doctor’s words) which means that we are doing a good (enough) job with his diet. That comes as huge relief to me as the primary feeder of my children since this diet has been nothing but a source of stress and frustration.

But other than that, we are simply enjoying our summer: hanging out with friends, swimming — at least daily, if not twice daily — in the pool, picking mulberries from a tree at Braedan’s school and making them into waffles and pancakes. Although we certainly think about Austin’s kidney and although I certainly write about it, we are content not making any decision for a while. Someone asked the other day what would finally change, how we would go from our current wavering to a steadfast choice. Mark’s reply was that it’s simply a matter of time. Now is not the time for making that decision. Now is the time for resting and relaxing and recovering. When the time for the decision comes, we’ll just make it.