I'm posting this as a new topic to get feedback and warn others of this potential situation.
My mother was diagnosed with diverticulitis at least 15 years ago, but sent home with just dietary recommendations after a brief hospital stay.
In march this year, she was diagnosed with UC and has been trying to control it with prednisone, entyvio, uceris, but has had three separate hospitalizations for it - the last was for 9 days as of this past Friday, when she suddenly was sent to the ICU due to very low BP.
At first, the ICU thought it was simply due to a blood thinner they had given her for a clot that developed while hospitalized. But two x-rays later they determined there was a lot of air in her chest cavity and outside the bowel and there was probably a perforation.
The prognosis was extremely grim. She was already very sick, and now needed emergency surgery by a general surgeon who was sure he was going to have to remove her whole colon - a very risky prospect considering her condition. By some miracle from above, only about
a foot of her middle colon was diseased and perforated and he simply removed that and created an ileostomy. It was the fastest and safest option. He said it was a ruptured diverticulosis, due to a colon that had been weakened by UC That had caused the need for the immediate surgery. Overall, it went miraculously well considering all of the other potential scenarios--we had said our goodbyes to her and expected surgery to last 7 hours--when he came out after three we were sure it was the worst news. But she was ok, even if by no means out of the woods due to the blood thinner she had been given about
12 hours before surgery.
Her kidneys weren't working after surgery so she was not filtering the thinner out of her body and it was causing her to bleed way too much. They kept pumping her with blood and everything under the sun and had her on three blood pressure meds to maintain a normal BP. Thank god these things exist.
Today, her prognosis is better - she is maintaining her BP on her own, the bleeding is not an issue and they've addressed the clot via an IVC fileter now. They will try to start the process of getting her off the ventilator in the morning. They will start to feed her intravenously and her ostomy bag is working apparently. Anything can still happen but goddarn, is she fighting.
I don't know how this might have been avoided - colonoscopies, sigmoidoscopies, some other endoscopic procedure where they go in through the mouth, catscans, x-rays - none of them showed anything early enough to help without this happening. She had them all multiple times. They had to
open her to figure it all out. Almost seems like she should have just had surgery right away when she was strong! But they make you try meds first.
If she comes out of this, the rest of her colon and her small bowel looked good, so she might be UC free? I don't know...but she sure as hell deserves to be.
Please send good vibes for her.
Post Edited (mizzemm) : 6/4/2017 5:38:36 PM (GMT-6)