Da Vinci- A Reason I'm Glad I'm Not in Chile Now

I'm really picky about my doctors. Doctors practice medicine and I do lots of research to find doctors who are excellent at what they do with lots of practice. I've personally seen a good doctor versus an "ok" doctor being the reason I was born in the first place, for saving my life since, and saving the lives of others I know.

My son recently had a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection). His pediatrician really pushed me to get further testing done after the antibiotics had killed the infection and not just wave it off and wait to see if it happened again. I was hesitant to get the tests done because they were not fun for my 5 year old but this doctor is awesome and I listen to her. Turns out he has reflux of his ureter and damage to his left kidney. I took him to a Urologist (who I also researched) who was able to diagnose exactly what was wrong but needed to talk to his team of Urologists and specifically one of his partners to see if he would be comfortable removing the lower part of his left kidney (which is where the blood supply runs) via a laparoscopic method which is less invasive than a longer abdomen cut and allows them to more precisely fix the ureter. Turns out that this Urologist proposed that his partner does part of the surgery using a very cutting edge (no pun intended) robot called the Da Vinci to fix it and he would take care of the rest. I looked up this robot and it is really cool. It was actually featured on Grey's Anatomy. Check it out- http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/index.aspx

The reason I titled this post the way I did is (1) somehow relate it to Chile and (2) because I checked the web site and there are no Da Vinci surgeons in Chile yet so I'm glad he has this option here.

He won't have this operation until August and I don't think I'm going to tell him about it until right before nor will I show him the robot until after. He HAD to watch them put the iv in him when he had one of the tests run so if I show him the robot before he will probably want to refuse anesthesia so he can watch the robot.

Also, while I'm on the topic of medical things- just yesterday this article was posted regarding the side effects of using the nasal form of Zicam and the FDA wanting the company to put a warning on the product. This is related to the post where I warned people about this due to what happened to my friend.