A Quick Little Update

On Tuesday I took Nathan to see Dr. Downey, a surgeon in the General Pediatric Surgery Department, to have another look at his paresphogeal hernia. The doctor talked with me about Nathan's symptoms and about what my thoughts were on having this operation done. We sat down together and reviewed the upper GI test on the computer. Dr. Downey thought very carefully about it for a couple of minutes, found the upper GI down in January last year, and then said, "I don't like it, but this has got to be fixed. The hernia is much to large and the opening is too tight." A complication of this surgery is that he has to have his nissen redone because that is where the hernia is. I was sick about this because the nissen was one of Nathan's harder surgeries for him. I trust Dr. Downey though. When I had talked to Nathan's pediatrician who had done his residency at Primary's, he commented that Dr. Downey was one of the most conservative surgeons at Primary's and that he would tell me what would need to be done with Nathan's hernia and I should trust him. Both Jake and I really like Dr. Downey and his team of nurses, but this is going to be Nathan's 17th surgery and he'll be a couple of days shy of 21 months when he has this done.

Due to the doctor's schedule, Nathan is going to be having surgery again on Monday. After this last "incident" in the hospital Nathan will again get to spend some quality time in the intensive care unit. Knock on wood, but for being a heart baby, that seems to be the least of Nathan's problems. The surgery will be done laproscopically, but because of old scar tissue from both his heart surgery and nissen/g-tube surgery its going to be harder to recover from than last time.

Monday, the 19th, is the "Big Day" so to speak. It will be just 3 weeks shy of Jake having his bone tumor removed from his femur. The tumor was benign, but he is still on crutches and had his 27 staples removed from his leg last Tuesday. I'll be caring for two invalids which is why I am grateful that Janice is being extremely sweet and coming from Nashville to help me for a couple of days next week. I couldn't have been given a better little sister!

I hope that this will be Nathan's last surgery for a while and that life can resume to being somewhat normal, whatever that may be.