What's Up With Emma?

First let me say thank you to everyone who has expressed love and concern for Emma and our family. We have appreciated and felt all of your prayers.

So many of you have been asking about Emma and we finally got the results from her kidney biopsy.

The official diagnosis is FSGS (focal segmental glomerulosclerosis) The doctors are going to start with a steroid treatment which 1/3 of patients usually respond to. If she falls into the category of patients that don't respond they'll try another medication. There are 5 or 6 treatments to try before dialysis or transplant would be considered necessary. (Thanks for all of you who have already offered up a kidney already. You're all awesome!)

We feel very blessed with our options and with our doctor even though she is 4 hours away. But I guess pediatric nephrologists are hard to come by.

Emma's puffiness seems to be reducing which is a good sign. There are some pictures below in the slide show. The only thing she has to worry about now are the side effects of the steroids which are (to name a few) a change in her facial appearance, swollen abdomen, and increased appetite. She's also on a low sodium diet and she figured out really fast that most sweets are low in sodium!

The Army's treating Brad great by letting him remain on hold in his training until things normalize with Emma. We are definitely enrolled in EFMP now, which eliminates our overseas options, but we just want Emma to get the best treatment.

As always we miss you ALL. Hopefully Brad and Ava will make it back to Utah for Thanksgiving. Hope to see everyone soon. I'll try to keep updates coming but as you can see I haven't kept up on the blog since the Triathlon because things have just been a little crazy.

thanks again to everyone.