Day 17: Pancreatitis

A friend messaged me tonight saying she was scouring Facebook, looking for a great post-op update on Natalie. I wish I could be giving that right now, but I can't just yet.

First of all, Natalie is doing fine right now...and by fine, I mean much better than she was at about 7:00.

I followed Natalie into the operating room at about 3:00 this afternoon, and we finally heard from the surgeon at about 6:45.

The plan for surgery was to put in a G-tube, which is a tube from her stomach to the outside of her abdomen. In the future, this will be used to get Natalie all of her nutrition (food), as well as her medication. It's much safer than the traditional route down the esophagus, which can lead to aspiration. The second part of the surgery was to tighten up the top of her stomach to prevent reflux, which it's believed was a major part of her respiratory problems. The third part was to ease the path out for food out of her stomach, by releasing some of the muscle at the bottom her stomach. This was to all be done laparoscopically.

Upon entering her stomach, the surgeon quickly discovered massive amounts of inflammation in her abdomen, along with her pancreas. So now we have a new diagnosis: pancreatitis.

Apparently, this helps to connect the dots of what has happened since Natalie's hospitalization began. It may have been the cause of the major respiratory failure last Sunday and Monday. Whether it was or it wasn't, we DO know that surgery today stirred up the inflammation and caused another big respiratory failure.

Once again, she's on much more ventilator support, needs more fluids to keep up her blood pressure, and needs more oxygen to keep up her sats. When she came back from the operating room, it became clear that she may be going back on the high frequency ventilator. After a bit of help, she began to bring her sats and blood pressure back up.

Resting Post-op (and no more NG tube!)

Right now, she's doing so much better, but definitely not where she was prior to surgery. Tonight will be another scary night for us, but hopefully she surprises us all again and recovers quickly.

As for the surgery, Dr. Engum was able to do all three things he set out to accomplish, although the tube cover on the outside of her tummy is just a temporary cover, but that's small in the grand scheme of things. He also had to do a traditional incision for the surgery because of the inflammation. Boo.

What caused all of this? Did the pancreatitis lead to the respiratory issues? Did a virus, aspiration, and pancreatitis all come together at the same time to lead to the hospitalization? That's what we're trying to figure out right now.

The most important thing is to get her through this setback.

Day 17 is nearly done. Bring on Day 18.