One Surgery Down!!!

Okay....this is going to be short and to the point. We have eaten or slept or seen Ned yet so this entry will be straight medical info. Surgery is over and everything went fine. They were able to remove his stomach, spleen, bowel and liver from his chest cavity and put it back where it goes in the abdomen. During the surgery they removed his appendix for extra space and something on his bowel know as a meckel's diverticulum. Quick explanation: All fetus have the meckels diverticulum during the first trimester, but in 2% of the population, it doesn't dissolve. It doesn't inherently cause any probelms, but later in life it can begin to produce acid in the lower bowel where your body is capable of handling such high acids.....so, they removed it. There was also an area of the bowel that had been kinked up since everything had floated out of it's normal position. The area that was kinked had gone without blood flow and after they unkinked it, the tissue never returned to normal. So, they took out that small area (about 2 inches). They didn't sew the two pieces of bowel back together yet due to the complications with doing that while there was swelling the bowel. For now, Ned will have a little ileostomy bag and they will perform another surgery in 6-8 weeks to put that back together. The good news is that the kink was pretty far down on the bowel track and shouldn't affect his ability to digest and intake nutrition!!

They put in the gortex patch and there was actually a little flap of diaphram that was rolled up near his spine which gave them something to sew the patch to in that area which is the most critical part and normally the most likely area to reherniate.....so that little flap was a huge blessing. God held him completely steady during surgery...his vent settings remained the same and he didn't need any blood transfusions so they expect his recovery to pick up where it left off!!!I think that is all for now....or at least the highlights. They are changing out his fluids and doing some x-rays to look at his new anatomy, then we'll be able to go in and see him!

I'll update better in the morning. Thank you all for all your prayers. There has never been a day when I needed them more! Let's just pray that little Ned's lungs will really start to develop and take off. Dr. Adamson said that he had about 50% of his left lung so we're really praying that all his lung will really be able to function and fix all his pressures so he can get off those meds pretty effortlessly. Okay....this was pretty long....love you all!

Betsy, Travis, Jack & Ned