Hydronephrosis

There's a new vocabulary word for you.  I had to look it up myself today.  Here's why...

I started having intense back pain on my lower, right side Monday evening.  At first I thought it was from sitting in an uncomfortable booth at dinner and then sitting on the bleachers at Jake's softball game right after.  However, it never went away after sleeping that night and I had the same intense pain all day Tuesday at work.  Tuesday evening I called my Ob's triage nurse, thinking that I might have a kidney infection or kidney stone.  She called in a prescription for kidney infection, and told me to go to the doctor's office first thing Wednesday morning.  They worked me in to the schedule and I saw a nurse, nurse practitioner, and a doctor.  They sent off a urine sample for culture to check for kidney infection or UTI.  Both ended up coming out negative so I stopped taking the prescription they gave me.  They did an ultrasound to check my uterus, cervix, and see how baby was doing.  Everything there looked really good, so it gave me piece of mind that whatever this was, it wasn't hurting the baby and she seems to be just as healthy as ever with a good, strong heartbeat and normal movement.

I had to fast for the next 6 hours and later Wednesday afternoon I went for a renal ultrasound, where they checked my heart, kidneys and bladder.  The images were sent to my Ob for review, and they called this morning to let me know that there is no sign of kidney stone.  There was some fluid in my right kidney, but that is often found in pregnant women and would not be causing the pain.  Diagnosis ended up being a pinched Lumbar nerve in my back, just caused by pregnancy since organs move around and can push on things. 

Well, for some reason my Ob decided to take another look at the renal ultrasound images this afternoon and realized that my right kidney is dilated, = Hydronephrosis.  There are a few things that can cause it, but most likely baby girl is positioned in a way that my uterus is causing a pinch or blockage from my right kidney to my bladder.  More doctors visits are in my future this coming week to check and confirm what's going on.  Prayers are definitely appreciated, and I will update later on this week.