Ian's Emergency Surgery

So I came home to a husband and a puking baby. Apparently, while mommy was out, daddy was having a tough day. Ian did not hold down anything. He was projectile vomiting. My mom had called me on the way home from Chicago and told me about Pyloric Stenosis, so I was really worried the whole drive home.

The Pylorus is the muscle between the stomach and the intestines. It is a radial muscle like the sphincter. In some children around 3+ weeks old the muscle gets too large and does not let anything pass from the stomach to the intestine. This is diagnosed by an ultrasound and fixed by a simple surgery. Essentially, the Dr. cuts the pylorus to weaken the muscle so that it will let the food through.

Russ called the Dr. and she told us to go to the ER. It was such a long day! We went to the ER at about midnight and they did the preliminary tests and he checked out just fine...his electrolytes were okay and his skin was the appropriate color. Then, they did the ultra sound. The results came back positive for pyloric stenosis, so I had to pump so they could do another ultra sound while he was drinking. That also turned out positive. The whole thing took forever. It seemed like we were waiting for everything.

Next, they sent us to Lutheran hospital in Fort Wayne for his surgery. It was about 6:00 a.m. and Russ had to drive through the pouring rain to Fort Wayne. It seemed like the longest drive ever. We were both exhausted and I was trying to stay awake with Ian to make sure he didn't choke on his spit-up.

Once we got to Lutheran (around 7:00 a.m.), it seemed to take forever. The pediatric surgeon who saw Ian was Dr. Smith. Unfortunately, he didn't see Ian until after church. The worst part was that Ian had to empty his stomach, so we could not feed him all day. Luckily, the IV helped keep his hunger down. The nice thing about the hospital was that Russ and I took turns napping. Russ ran home (1 hour) to take the dogs to the kennel. When he was on the road, they came in and told me that Ian was going into surgery...now. We had expected to speak to the Dr. first, but the OR opened up, so we were trying to get in. I got to speak to the Dr. and the anesthetist and he went to surgery. A 1/2 hour later, the surgery was done. We ended up staying until Monday.

Ian's incision