Kidney Specialist Search

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Good Morning to any and all who might read this. I am needing help in finding a doctor or someone who might have had this same problem. I am the mother of a daughter who is 30 years old. She was born with multiple birth defects and having only one kidney present was one of the major ones. She had many infections, bladder and UTI, through her childhood years. She has adapted very well and so has the kidney. She never has had a loss of control or incontinence of any kind. Not long ago, she was suffering with severe pain and could not urinate. She went into the hospital and they said she had a kidney stone. Of course, this concerned us in the fact that we have always done all we could to take care of that one kidney. The doctor went in to find that there was NOT a kidney stone and suggested that she had passed it. Even though when she left the hospital, she could not urinate, they said it was sore from the procedure and the kidney stone that they thought she had passed. So, she was given paraphernalia to self cath until it lost its inflammation and soreness. She went several days and still could not urinate without self cath and finally went back into the hospital for some more tests and the doctor then inserted a balloon like an angioplast but for her urethera so that it would be more open and would give her the ability to urinate. She has been in and out of the hospital several times since then and all to no satisfactory end. The last test was an MRI and she just received the results of that this past week. They found nothing out of the ordinary and so now my 30 year old daughter is left with the task of self cathing for the rest of her life? I will not accept that. There has got to be someone who will take her case and maybe have a whole team of doctors and specialists who will take interest in her case. If there is nothing out of the ordinary, then why can't she urinate? There is something they are missing. A little more background on my daughters birth defects, she cannot have children because of misplaced uterus, she had two hemi uterus' that were found during a surgery when she was about 13 when she should have been having a period. Blood was pooling in her abdomen and they removed a 2 liter bottle of blood. Our fist sign at birth of her difficulties was that she had an imperforate anus and had to have a colostomy until she was about 4 years old where they reversed it and pulled down her bowels and created a rectal opening. She is bothered with limited control over her bowels as she has her outward sphincter muscle but not the inward one thus giving her less time to run to the bathroom. Again, she has adapted well to this problem as well but is unable to hold down a job which she has tried so many times to do but with having accidents and having to leave to go home for hygeine, the has lost many jobs for this reason. She is now receiving disability because of this which is not her wish but she had to have an income. She is married to a very understanding and loving husband who strongly supports her through all of her traumas. As her mother, I know that there has got to be something that can be done for many of these obstacles that has beset her young life. She has always been a fighter and persevered in excelling in her school work and if she was at school for any length of time without problems, she was at the top of her class, but her absences brought her grades down and she would get behind. She would then go back fighting but now as time and more obstacles face her, she has dropped into a deep depression and has given up. Please someone help me to help her find answers. I beg of anyone who reads this if you know of someone or a doctor who might be able to help her, to please contact me.

[Beth Witten MSW ACSW]

Here's an article on inability to urinate that includes possible causes, symptoms, exams & tests, treatments, etc.
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/inabi...article_em.htm

If your daughter is not satisfied with what she has been told and she wants to find out if self-catheterization is the only way to address this problem, she may want to seek another opinion. You can find a list of urologists in her area on the AMA's Doctor Finder website. Be sure to look at non-AMA members as well as members. Once you have the list, you might want to ask around to see if anyone can recommend someone on the list.
http://webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfi...l/patient.html