Last Friday when we confirmed with both doctors, we found out that Gavin didn’t need to do the full bowl prep for Monday. That was a relief because it freed us up some on Sunday. Sunday night, we dropped the girls off at my parents’ house and then tried to get some sleep. We were up at 1:30 am to be on the road by 2. Our trip there was super easy. Gavin slept the whole time and there isn’t a bunch of traffic at that time. We got checked in early and waited for surgery.
His surgery was supposed to start at 8:30, but didn’t start until 10:15. We were in the pre op room for 4 hours! The hold up was that they forgot to order an enema for Gavin and the anesthesia team was still with another patient. Gavin seriously is the toughest kid I know! The enema was rough, but he did so well and held it in for almost 20 minutes! We passed the time waiting for surgery by watching tv, playing on an ipad, and hanging out with Child Life person, Whitney. This was Gavin’s third time having her, so that helped.
Finally, it was Gavin’s time to go back and he did great! The surgery took 2.5 hours. They ended up doing the scope first. Dr. Contreras came out to talk to us and give us some not so good news. They did see 2 hemorrhoids, which is probably why we are seeing so much bleeding. However, hemorrhoids in small children is not very common. Then, she said that the spot they saw before had changed dramatically. Where she had to squint to see it last time, it was now visible to everyone in the room. She couldn’t treat the spot at that time. She said that it is similar to his leg and that it is feeding the hemorrhoids which is why there is no relief. She then said that she would have to refer to adult surgeons because it was very serious. She mentioned a possible bowel resection.
As soon as she left, I started crying. I was so relieved that they found something, but devastated that it is so complex and makes our road even longer. Another procedure and still no fix for the bleeding we deal with daily, several times a day. Ughh!
The action plan for GI is: monthly blood draw (which we can do here, but his counts are slowly going down and this is concerning), scopes every 6 months, treat hemorrhoids with cream and sitz baths, refer to other doctors to see what they think. Unless the doctors order something, we will see her in 4 months.
The rest of the surgery went pretty well. Gavin had 8 more coils put in his leg. He now has a total of 23 coils in there! Dr. Marshalleck is confident that this time the vein is closed off. Dr. M said that he just wants to see Gavin in 2-4 months, so whenever we are heading to Indy, he will squeeze us in.
When he was waking up, they called us back and we were able to help him wake up. They let us know that they were keeping him overnight. I was relieved because last time was such a nightmare (vomitting, peeing everywhere, pain management). Thankfully, we told them to avoid morphine and that did the trick.
The toughest part of our stay was pain management. Once we were on it, he did great. The biggest problem was that the compression sock rubbed the top of his foot and heel raw. Gavin was a super patient and we made it through the night. He even agreed to get a flu shot!
Aunt Annie and Andre visited us and brought Brian and I dinner. We all got some sleep and were more than ready to go home on Tuesday. That was Gavin’s 6th time being put to sleep and his 4th this year! Hopefully, we will get a short break!
While we were there, Gavin got a slinky, car, Iron Man figurine, car set, and Uno game for being so good!
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