Surgery Update

Carter's surgery went much better than expected yesterday.  He had a great night and has done really well today.  He has been in and out of it for the most part.  He has a PCA pump that I am able to push whenever I think he is in pain and it goes continuously.  It has really helped keep Carter's pain to a minimum.  They are wanting Carter to rest and heal the next few days, so it has also kept him calm enough to rest.  

Describing what was done during surgery is very difficult, but I will try.  They started at the small intestine and worked their way down Carter's intestines taking down all of the adhesions.  Adhesions are scar like tissue that causes things to stick together.  Normally your organs and tissue are able to move around each other and adjust whenever you move.  When there is an adhesion it cannot do this.  Carter had multiple adhesions causing his intestines not to be able to move properly.  Adhesions usually occur after a surgery is performed, so we were not surprised to hear that he had multiple adhesions.  So, they took down all of the adhesions and once they got to the end of Carter's colon they moved it from being behind his bladder to up high in his abdomen, near his small intestine.  They then created what is called a Malone.  This is a valve that is created to help clean out Carter's intestine.  This will be helpful if he does have motility issues, the movement of stool through the intestines, in the future we will just flush fluid through the Malone and clean his intestines out for him.  They also found a hole in Carter's mesentery.  The mesentery is a leaf like structure that aides in holding parts of your intestine in place. A piece of bowel had slipped through the hole and was kinked. They think this was the cause of all of the vomiting.   The hole could have possibly been there since birth, since it was midline and Carter has a midline defect.   However, the problem arose when a piece of bowel slipped into it. We were also informed that Carter has about 150cm of bowel, normal is 250-300.  The surgeon was still positive about this and said it is still plenty to work with.  I know it is all a little confusing, but basically he had a clean up, tune up, rearranging and modification done to his intestines.

Taking down the adhesions is a very painful procedure.  This is why Carter has the PCA pump.  Our focus right now is pain management. We will wait until Carter has stool to begin feeding him and that will tell us if the surgery was successful or not.  We do not anticipate this to happen until next week.  Both of the Surgeons and Urologist are anticipating a good outcome and have been very positive about what they found.  Please continue to pray for Carter.  Pray for pain management and for his bowels to heal and start to function.  Thank you all for all of your prayers and continued prayers.  They mean more to us than you will ever know!