I’m blogging from the surgery waiting room and hoping that I can finish this before the surgeon comes out as it appears that they are closing right now.
It’s been an exciting 18 hours. First of all, let’s do a review lesson.
Patrick had an ostomy created at transplant. “Ostomy” means “outward thingy” in layman’s terms. In Patrick’s case, it means that they pulled a little bit of his new intestine out through his abdominal wall and put a couple of small holes in it. The purpose of this was to make it easier to do biopsies. Rather than needing to sedate him to look into his intestine with a scope, since there are no pain nerves in the intestine, they could take off the pouch covering the ostomy, insert a small camera and look at the intestine.. then they could take a small biopsy and screen for rejection. Patrick has had this done 3 times since transplant. So far there are no signs of rejection.
I read in some article while Patrick was recovering a suggestion to name your child’s ostomy. It makes it more approachable. It gives you a kind of code-word to talk about it in public. After much debate, we named Patrick’s ostomy Louie.
Well, Louie had a problem last night. I’m not sure exactly when or how. Probably sometime around dinner Patrick started to guard the way he was moving. Not bending over. Not wanting to sit. And I, in all my brilliance, didn’t think to check and see why. I assumed Louie’s bag was getting full.
Well, at 8:45 I went to give Patrick his medications and get him ready for bed. I asked him to get undressed and he really struggled. He particularly couldn’t get the cover off of his ostomy pouch. So I knelt down to help him and thought, “Gee. That looks funny.” I looked forward and Patrick’s ostomy had “prolapsed” or, in other words, slipped out.
That doesn’t mean all of Patrick’s intestines came out. What it means is that an ostomy is a surgically created hernia.. only somehow Patrick’s had made his hernia herniate and so more of it was out that was surgically intended.
But it was new and still looked good. So I called the on call nurse coordinator. When I told her why I was calling I could hear surprise and concern in her voice. She asked me a few questions and then asked if I could come bring him in.
They have a short term treatment center here that they have their transplant patients come to for minor emergencies. Kind of nice to not have to go through the ER. They checked us in and then called the surgery resident to come have a look. The transplant team was all in a kidney transplant so it took a minute for her to arrive.
When she came, though, she had a look and Louie was seeming a little upset. Swollen and kind of dark colored. So she said we should spend the night and decide what to do in the morning. Then not long afterwards, the surgical attending came in. He tried to push Louie back inside, but without success. He said we should sleep on the problem, too.. But suggested that, as this was the second problem with Louie in the 2 months since transplant, and since Patrick isn’t needing regularly biopsies right now, maybe it was time to consider taking down the ostomy.
So Patrick and I spent the night last night. We went to bed about 2. He mostly got to sleep until just before 10. It was a cuddly, nice night. And nice to have a break from being the one keeping the medical care going during the night. And in the morning, Louie was slowly going back in.. but not quite enough and a revision was looking necessary.
So we talked with the surgeon this morning. Ultimately, we decided that Patrick is a very active child who was going to continue to have problems with this unless something more was done. And it didn’t make sense to put him through a surgery to maintain an ostomy that is rarely being used for the reason it was created.
**Picking up this post at 9 p.m. Patrick’s surgery went well. They were able to take down his ostomy.. The intestine was already connected, so they just needed to close things back up. Nevertheless, this did leave him with good inch-long incision that will need to heal. It isn’t stitched closed. They are packing it with gauze to heal as they have found that this provides better healing, even if it also means a bigger scar.
He has had a hard day. He is sad and he is sore and he is itchy. He wants to eat and drink. He doesn’t understand why this happened so suddenly or why. The pain medicines have made it so he’s slept most of the day, thankfully, as long as Brian or I lay with him. That is probably the hardest thing from our perspective. Getting up to eat or go to the bathroom or really do anything upsets him. So we just try to lay still. There are 2 TV’s in the room so one can play his shows and one can be tuned in to one of ours.
Hopefully this first day or two will be all that is hard. As soon as his gut wakes up and starts moving things through, he can start clear liquids again and then they’ll restart feeds. It will probably be at least a week.
I’m grateful Brian is here to give me breaks and to go back to the Ronald McDonald House for clothing and food. I’m sorry, though, that we are spending the last week of his visit here this way.
Hopefully it will be just a short setback that adds up to a better quality of life for him long-term.
Patrick Hoopes 