Surgery Update number one

IT is 12:15 and Ellie has been insugery for just over four hours now. I got up with Gus this morning at 5:20 (he is still amazingly accurate and precise in his waking time) and started to head to the hospital with a stop at Dunkin' Donuts. I had made it halfway out of the DD parking lot when Abby called to tell me that (surprise!!) Ellie was going at 8 Am instead of 10 and to get there as soon as I could. I was there 10 minutes later and Ellie was wheeled out 5 minutes after that. Our coffee stayed on the table as we went downstairs to pre op and then she got wheeled away at 7:45.

We lasted exactly 15 minutes in the waiting room before we decided to heed the advice of another mother who suggested that we go shopping during Ellie's surgery. It seemed like an absurd idea until we began waiting and then it made absolute sense to go walking.

The nurse liasons got our cell phone numbers and off we went for breakfast. We got updates at 9, 10, and 10:30 advising us of her progress and then at 5 minutes of 11 we got the call to be back to talk to the surgeon. We walked 8 blocks in 8 minutes and met Dr. Jacsik all sweaty and wheezing(it has been a while since we have gotten to the gym).

He has a bunch of things to tell us about wat he had seen and done:

First, Ellie's bowel is significantly shorter than we had been told. Instead of having close to 45 cm of small bowel and most of her large intestine, she has just over 30 cm of small bowel and only 60 percent of her large bowel. This is bad news and officially puts her in the 'critically short' category of short bowel syndrome patients, but she is still better off than the patients that the doctors told us 'make them cringe' a while back who have less than 25 cm of small bowel.

Second, her bowel had developed an adhesion where the repared portion had turned and made a u shaped kink on itself and attached to the upper part. This U may have slowed things down, and was removed.

Third, the anastomosis (connection) was tight and slowing things down as we had assumed. This was opened in sugery and will hopefully open her up and move things along.

After Dr. JAcsik met with us he returned to the OR to finish up with Ellie and put a pleat in her dilated bowel.

All signs are good for now, not as good as we had hoped but now we know what we are delaing with and will play the new hand of cards that we have been dealt.

Boston ain't so bad in the fall, I guess.