charley rae furrh

From the first day Charley was born, we were aware that Charley had one kidney that did not developed.  Although this was tough news for us to hear, the good news was that her right kidney functioned at 100%!   We were told that in order to protect the good kidney, the bad one would have to eventually be removed.  The doctor’s suggestion was to wait until she was between 14-16 mos. old and then we would take care of it. 

Charley has managed to live the first 15 mos of her life without even the slightest problem from her kidneys.  She has been the picture of health.  In spite of this, the doctor still insisted it was necessary to remove the bad kidney.  We took his word for it and scheduled the surgery for January 24th, 2010.

On Monday morning, we checked into Christus Shumpert Hospital in Shreveport.  We were told this procedure was routine and that it should only take a couple of hours, three at the most.  At 7:15 they took our Charley to the operating room.  She made us feel so good as she looked back at us and waved, "Bye, bye!"  Three hours and a bit more, we were summoned to the recovery room and told that Charley was great and getting ready to wake up.  We felt relief and thanked God for seeing our little girl through the surgery.

After a few hours in recovery we noticed that she had not passed as much as one drop of urine.  After 7 hrs of waiting with no results, they decided to do an ultrasound to see what could be holding up her good kidney from passing urine.  Imagine our shock when the ultrasound tech said she couldn't find the kidney!  They told us it was probably just because of the air they used to expand the abdomen and that they would repeat the ultrasound with the radiologist and surly he would have better results.  Our hearts sank when he was unable to locate the kidney at all!  At this point, they regrouped, reviewed past scans and decided to do a nuclear scan and surely this would explain everything. 

At approximately 8:00 PM, our doctor came to the room and told us that somehow, when removing the bad kidney, he found that the bad kidney to be the shape of a horseshoe and in attempting to remove the entire bad kidney, he compromised the good kidney and now there was no longer any function left.  As a matter of fact, he had actually removed it as well.  Hence the empty ultrasounds.

We were devastated.  The only thing left to do at this point was to transfer Charley to Children's Hospital in Dallas and prepare her for dialysis and kidney transplant.  We were in shock.  Just hours ago, we had a happy, healthy little girl full of life and energy and now we were faced with the possibility of who knows what.

We left Christus Shumpert at 11:00 PM via ambulance and arrived at Children's Hospital around 1:00AM.  Within minutes they were working on Charley and doing everything possible to help our little girl.

Today is January 25th and we have been at Children's for almost 16 hours.   Charley is headed back to surgery to have her dialysis port put into her abdomen.  The plan is to continue with dialysis until Charley is at leat 45lbs. and then use and adult donor for a kidney transplant.  We will be using a type of dialysis that we can do at home every evening.  This will allow Charley a simi shot at a normal lifestyle rather than  long days at dialysis centers. 

We will start looking for a match for a donar kidney right a way and know when the time is right for Charley to have the transplant that we have a plan in place and will be ready to go.

We will keep everyone posted as we learn new information.  We want to thank everyone for all their prayers and support.  We have such a wonderful network of family and friends.  We are so blessed.

With God on our side and our family behind us and our friends beside us, we will no doubt see a positive outcome.

Again, thank you, we love all and stay tuned.

love.....

Ashley, Drew and Charley