This has been a tough week with lots of pain and nausea. The stent moved significantly yesterday and we were so hopeful but then it became stuck in the lower section of the small intestine in a macaroni noodle kind of curve. It was getting so close but was still out of reach of being able to get with a scope. The surgeon decided it was time to do surgery and remove it. Enough is enough and to keep waiting was counter productive.
The surgery was 3-1/2 hours long this evening. It was a concerned wait after thinking it would be 1-1/2. The end result is good news but what happened was serious, a real mess.
When he had his first emergency, because his gall bladder had ruptured and died, a lot of bile had drained into his abdomen. In the aftermath, he had four more procedures to stop and fix bile leakages and drainage. Bile acts like a detergent and melts fat. The surgeon found lots of melted, sticky, gooey, mud-like fat plastered to his intestines which he had to remove. It caused the intestine to tighten and twist in the area where the stent was stuck causing a total blockage. There was no way the stent could move any further. This also caused issues with his stomach and it couldn’t empty causing nausea and three days of nonstop hiccups. The hiccups was the body’s way of responding to the bloating and air in his stomach and diaphragm. They removed 2 liters of fluid from his tightly bloated stomach.
On Sunday he had pizza for lunch which did not settle well and caused him to start throwing up. But what it actually did was alert us to a more serious issue that was developing before it became an extreme emergency. His stomach had closed off and he could not process food. His intestines had been pinched shut and his bowel could not move. I could hear his bowel rumbling sitting in my lazy boy chair across the room.
This is the short version of a serious situation. I am so grateful the surgeon became concerned about the distress Gene was in and made the compassionate decision to do surgery tonight even though most of it was not showing on scans. Gene is expected to make a full recovery however it will be a long haul as it feels like he is starting recovery all over again but this time from a compromised condition. My prayer is that there will be no more problems!