I just got home a little while ago, and was going to write about Konner anyway, but a few of you on Twitter and Facebook have asked, and since it’s such a long story, it makes sense to write it up here rather than dealing with the character limits.

Sandy and Konner

My best friend’s son Konner (my godson) was born with a kidney disease called hydronephrosis hydroureternephrosis. One of his kidneys was irreparably damaged because of this, and the other was starting to fail, too. I guess I never ended up writing about it, but his urologist at Yale, Dr. W, removed the bad kidney last year and said that the remaining kidney should heal and function at normal rate, but that there was a chance that it could begin to fail, too (because of the hydroureternephrosis). Konner seemed to have been recovering fine, and we all — doctors included — thought that he would continue to live a healthy life.

Earlier today, Sandy noticed that one of his testicles was pretty swollen, so she took him to the ER at St. Mary’s (local hospital) to have it checked out. While examining him and doing a catheter, the staff at St. Mary’s found that he has a large cloud of blood in his bladder, and a hernia (on his testicle, I think). They arranged to transfer him to Yale’s children’s hospital, since that’s where his urologist (Dr. Weiss) and other experts are. Admittedly, they don’t have that kind of expertise at St. Mary’s, so even though they said they didn’t know what was going on — whether it’s a UTI or a sign of kidney failure — and that it didn’t look good, I’m hoping that when Dr. Weiss sees him in the morning, things will look less grim. We do not want him to have to go on dialysis and wait for a donor match. We’re all hoping that it’s something much less major.

St. Mary’s did say that the hernia would have to be operated on and that the procedure would be relatively minor, but that they were much more concerned about the blood in his bladder. Sandy told me that when they did the catheter for a sample of his urine, nothing but blood came out, as if a vein had been cut open in someone’s arm or something.

So yeah. We are all pretty much freaked out right now. I had to go home because the visiting hours at Yale were over, but I would give anything to be there with Sandy right now. Luckily, Konner’s dad (Ryan) is awesome, so she isn’t alone.

I hope that Dr. Weiss and the team at Yale can come up with some answers tomorrow, and that those answers are much less scary than kidney failure. My little man has been through so much, and he’s only three. He’s definitely a fighter, though; he was all smiles and giggles while Mike and I were visiting at both St. Mary’s and Yale.

Please keep him in your thoughts. I’ll try to update as soon as I have more to tell, but if they’re still at Yale tomorrow I’ll probably be up there.