For Elizabeth Nario, life in a wheelchair hasn't held her back.

The 20-year-old has been a patient of Miller Children's Hospital's Pediatric Urology and Nephrology Program since she was just a few days old, when she was diagnosed with spina bifida.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, spina bifida is the most common neural tube defect in the United States, with an estimated 166,000 people in the country living with the condition. It occurs in about seven of every 10,000 babies born in the U.S.

"Other than all the procedures and appointments that are involved, spina bifida hasn't affected my life as much," Nario said in an interview with the Long Beach Post. "I live my life day to day. I'm usually not one to take my disability as seriously. There are many challenges that anyone would go through when having a disability, and all we can do is know that everything's going to turn out fine in the end."

Nario said her care in the Pediatric Urology and Nephrology Program, which cares for patients ranging in age from 10 days to 21 years old living with conditions like nephrotic syndrome and spina bifida, has in part helped her stay strong.

The hospital hopes to care for even more patients like Nario when it opens a full nephrology and urology outpatient center later this year.

The new center, which is slated for a June opening, will be about 3,400 square feet and will feature a specialized room for urodynamics, an X-ray system that studies the functions of the bladder. This technology will be the first of its kind in Long Beach, with the closest current offerings at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Children's Hospital Orange County.

"When there's no service of this kind in this area, then the patient will go outside the city," said Dr. Deepak K. Rajpoot, Director of Pediatric Nephrology at Miller Children's Hospital in an interview with the Post. "This will outshine other hospitals for Long Beach area residents because people don't want to travel 30 miles in traffic to go to the hospital."

The current program, which has two nephrology doctors and five urology doctors, serves between 1,700 and 1,800 outpatient visits, but Rajpoot said he estimates the new center can serve between 2,500 and 3,000 outpatient visits.

The new center is looking to be a convenience for its patients because it will offer services, like basic ultrasound, that patients would have had to go to multiple places for before.

"They can take care of everything in one place," Rajpoot said. "That's pretty much the concept of this new center is that the hospital wants to care for the community in one setting because nephrology and urology are so closely related that the patient doesn't have to keep making two appointments. That's the goal and the vision. I think we are on the track of getting to the full center designation with this new center that the hospital is expanding to. There's an acute need for pediatric urology in the Long Beach area. I think the hospital expanding in terms of specialized procedures and urology will help the community a lot."

...