Looking much better.

Emery went down for surgery this morning and was in for a couple of hours. They took him down for another look at his bowel to see If the return of blood flow had revived any of he compromised section. What they found was that many of the sections were looking better but not ideal. There were three sections that quite obviously needed to be removed. They did that and left the bowel disconnected for the time being just to continue waiting and seeing whether more will need to be removed. Since the pressure had built up so much when they put the wound vac on, they decided to attach a bag called a siloh (sp?), where the fluid and swollen tissue can escape but remain protected. He is still on the ventilator but did much better with the anesthesia this time. They didn't need to put him back on as many blood pressure meds. As soon as we saw him the change was remarkable. The pressure in his belly is greatly relieved by leaving the wound open and he is breathing easily with the ventilator. He looks sooo much better, to me, than he did last night and the nurses and surgeons don't seem near as stressed with his care. For the first time here I am so happy that we haven't seen the doctors since the surgery his morning. I am learning that it is actually good when you don't have to see them very often because that means Emery is stable. He is still getting a lot of help to bypass normal life functions but he is staying strong.

When we talked to the surgeon he was cautiously hopeful that they had removed what needed to be removed wanted to take another look at some of the segments that continue to be questionable. Emery currently has 120cm of bowel remaining, which is a little less than half, between his surgery and the surgery last spring. As we mentioned before, it is important that we salvage whatever we can to increase he likelihood hat he will be able to take at least some of his calories enterally. That will help protect his liver from damage caused by Long term use of TPN to satisfy his calorie needs.

They are going to go in for another look tomorrow. He is scheduled for 12:30 pm, Tuesday so we will share more after that. After they see what is going on they may or may not leave him open a while longer to see how things are going and see about swelling. We have also decided to go ahead with the G-J tube that will allow us constant access to his stomach and jejunum. Hat will eliminate he need for an NG tube in his nose when we need to put things in or take fluid out of his belly. Until now, that did not seem like a good option because it would have meant more surgery and general anesthesia, and he tolerated he NG so well that we didn't want to fix a process that wasn't broken. No that we are already in there it makes sense to place one. Especially because he may now need a lot more help eating. We won't know that for some time. I don't know if I already said something on here or not but the surgeon said we should be prepared to be here for weeks to months until he is recovered and ready enough to go home. We are praying weeks. I will let you know when I know more and will post photos as soon as he is looking a little better.

For now I will leave you with a quote that has given me great comfort in the past couple of weeks. Emery has a favorite place to play catch in the courtyard so we would walk there every day that he felt well enough. This is written on one of the benches there and has made me feel a little better as we face our current situation.