Update on Shawn's Resection

Hi, This is Shawn's wife, Kathy, writing. Shawn asked me to post an update after his resection today. Everything went really well. The doctor said there was a lot less scar tissue than he expected after the other surgeries so he was very pleased with that. Anesthesia took a while to wear off, but aside from that he's doing really well! They are figuring 5 days in the hospital, and then he'll be able to come home!

Lets see, some specifics, his main incision was stapled closed so he no longer has a "valley" down his abdomen, and of course, he's thrilled not to be an "ostomate" (I think that's what he called himself!!!) He's on dilaudid for pain meds (can give himself a boost every 8 min.) and he's taking it probably every 8 minutes. He gets sharp pains sporatically that shoot his pain level to probably an 8. He really seems to be in more pain after this surgery than after the resections he had done, either that or he's less drugged than he was last time!!

Anyway, that's the update, may be more than he wanted shared, but hey, he's not here and I am! I'll try to post another updated in a couple days to let you all know how he's doing.

Thank you all for the support you have given him. It's been a huge help for him emotionally, you all know what he's going through and are giving him the support and encouragement that I can't give, not known first hand what he's going through, so from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

Kathy

I'm glad to hear things went well! It's encouraging for so many who haven't been through this procedure yet too...
Keep us updated :)

Glad everything went well. Here's to a speedy recovery.

Hi Everyone, it's Kathy again. Shawn's doing really good. The pain is a lot less now, and he had them switch from Dilaudid to Demerol (sp?) which seems to work better with his system. As of this morning he is passing gas which (I guess is a good thing, I just hope the nurses are wearing gas masks when they walk in)! LOL. He was having some issues with loss of blood yesterday, which lead his nurse to consult with his surgeon's nurse and they did a CT scan to find out where it was coming from (I still don't know what happen with that, but I guess no news is good news, right?) They gave him 2 units of blood yesterday because of all he was losing, that kinda made both of us a little nervous. The doc that was on duty this weekend said he was doing well enough on Saturday to start eating, he said solid foods, but Shawn's taking it slower and was just doing liquids. So far everything was staying down, so that's positive.

I'll be anxious to hear what HIS surgeon thinks about what all happened over the weekend. I'm going to see Shawn at lunch today and will pass on all the well wishes.

G/L Curly, I hope your surgery goes smoothly this week!

Kathy

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for the thoughts and prayers. I got to come home yesterday afternoon. I am doing well as far as pain goes. The doc has given mevicadin for pain, but Ihave only had to take a couple. My staple line is healing well, and the nurses said that my ostomy site looked really good when I left the hospital.
again, thanks for your thought and prayers as I have gone through this surgical procedure. You guys have given me comfort and hope that there is life after being diagnosed with this disease

I had a minor setback since my last post. Over Memorial weekend I noticed that a staple about a third of the way from the top of the incision had pulled out of the left side of the incision leaving a hole (that was allowing old clotted blood to escape). I did not think much of it since I was seeing my surgeon on Tuesday (26th) for the staples to be removed anyway. Unfortunately on Monday I started having quite a bit of stabbing pain on the right side of the incision where the staple was poking me. My wife and I decided that I had two options: 1) lay in bed and not move until I had my appointment the next day (not a very good option) or 2) go to the ER and have them remove the one staple. I decided to go to the ER. We ended up being there for 4 hours to get one staple removed and they also cultured the hole near it (standard procedure for any wound in the ER due to infections).


That night while I was showering I noticed that the area between the ostomy site and the incision line was very rigid. This was something I had not noticed before. While I was feeling the area, I started to ooze old blood out of a segment at the lower end of the incision. This continued for about 5-6 minutes. I started to wonder if there was a problem.



I went to the appointment with the surgeon on Tuesday and his nurse was going to do the staple removal. I told her about the weekend expereinces. She said that she needed to call the surgeon and he would probably want to take a look at it. (He was over in the hospital, right next door) She came back in and said it would be a couple of minutes, but he did want to look at it. He came in and looked at the incision and said that I had a hematoma under the entire incision. This would make the healing extremely slow and be a hot-bed for infection if he did not re-open the incision and clean it out. He took me back to his procedure room and gave me local anesthetic and then removed all of the staples. He re-opened the entire incision (almost 9 inches long) and cleaned it out. He then told me that I was going to have to have the incision packed and have the dressing changed twice a day.



We did this for a week. I returned to the surgeon last week for a follow-up and everything is healing well. They said that I could stop packing the incision and just to dressing changes once a day. I go back on Tuesday this week and am looking forward to their reaction. The incision is healing very rapidly.

Wow Shawn what a ride you have had! I had the same thing happen with my incision for both of my resections. I had to do the wet/dry packings for both of them. Hope your recovery goes better from here on out.

Hugs
Gail *Nanners*