Home and Healing

Alex is home again....resting and healing. He is clearly feeling much better as he even was up for going out for dinner with Brett and Carol last night! Brett came over to finish the mowing/edging of our lawn (meaning that it looks about 100 times better than usual!) and Alex opted to go out to eat rather than eating at the house! It seems to make a big difference when he gets out of the house for at least a little while every day.

We are now packing his newly opened wound on his belly with different material and they tell us it should be healed in 6-8 weeks. He is also soaking his other wounds in the bathtub a few times a day. We are scheduled to return to Cleveland for follow up on Sept. 4th and have several follow up appointments scheduled between now and then with his KC nurses/doctors. Alex was really looking forward to going back to work next week, but will now need until the end of August to recover from this last surgery.

Thank you all again for the prayers and encouragement. We know Alex is getting better day by day and are working on patiently awaiting the day he will be 100% again. Love and blessing to you all...

Surgery...part of the healing process

Alex made an emergency trip into Dr. Graham's office (KC surgeon) yesterday after severe pain in his bottom throughout the weekend (much like the pain he was experiencing before surgery). He had an abscess that needed to be drained and gave us the option of doing an in-office procedure under local anesthesia or under general anesthesia in the hospital the next day. Alex opted to be knocked out (who can blame him?) and we decided that would give the doctor a chance to take a more thorough look. Here's what we found out...
1. The painful place was a large horseshoe shaped abscess that went deep in his pelvis and back around to his tailbone. Dr. made two incisions to drain infection and placed drains. It was a very good thing Alex followed his gut to go into the hospital for the procedure as Dr. Graham said that what we saw in the office yesterday was "just the tip of the iceberg" to a much more extensive area of infection.
2. The small holes that we were packing on his incision line were all connected much deeper than Dr. Graham expected. He opened up two large places on his midline incision from the previous surgery so it could heal better from the inside out. He said it would likely have never healed if it was not re-opened.

Alex's bottom already feels much, much better...less pressure and much more comfortable to sit/lay on. The abscess is from his previous disease that is not connected any longer. The infection is trying to find its way out. We will probably be in the hospital until tomorrow or the day after, just to make sure everything is okay before we go home.

Incision

FYI...Alex's incision has healed so well over the last week that Dr. Graham (KC surgeon) wanted to give him another couple of weeks before thinking about opening any areas up! He'll continue with antibiotics for a week and we will go back to see him in two weeks. He may still need to open some spots up, but the doc wanted to "give it a good go" before we do :). We also met with a wonderful stoma nurse named Becky on Monday. She was extremely nice and will be a good contact if we have any issues come up as well as just for routine follow up. Some of the "proud flesh" that was previously cauterized is back (or just didn't heal from the last time), so Dr. Graham and/or Becky may burn that off again at our next appointment(s). We have one more appointment tomorrow with the KC GI's nurse practicitoner to update them on everything/inform them about current medication changes. He is no longer on the Remicaid infusions every 7 weeks or any other oral meds at all besides his antibiotics for his incision! That's a big change from 8-10 pills a day, nightly TPN, and 7 wk infusions....ah...freedom :). When we follow up with Dr. Shen (Cleveland GI doc) around September we will learn more about it that will change or not.

Thanks for your continued prayers! I wish all of you could come for a big celebration to see in person how much energy, strength and color he has now! He says he feels better than he has in a very, very long time. Right now he has spurts of energy, but still wears out pretty quickly. However, those spurts get longer and more frequent every day!

Love to you all...

Baby Blog is Up

http://www.lydiasloop.blogspot.com/ is our new little lady's very own blog site...check it out!

Alex is doing great and gaining strength everyday. Dale and Mom were up this weekend and he even felt up to helping Dale cut the last two replacement doors this morning. We got bloodwork last week to see if a blood transfusion was needed since his hemoglobin has been running so low (around the upper 7's/low 8's). His hemoglobin was up to 10.5, which is much higher than it has been since about Spring of 2007! Other tests showed that his bone marrow is regenerating red blood cells at a normal rate so that hemoglobin number should continue to get better and better (normal for males is 13 and above, so that's what we're shooting for). We have 3 different appointments this week to fill all the KC doctors in on how he's doing and meet with the KC ET nurses. Alex's incision continues to heal, but may need to be opened up on Tuesday to allow for better healing. We went in last week to see our surgeon here in KC b/c of increased drainage and some spots that looked as though they needed to drain, but couldn't. He put Alex back on some antibiotics and opened up a bit more of the incision. Tuesday he will decide how much more needs to be opened if any at all. It will all depend on how much he has healed over this last week. Regardless, he said it was "no big deal. A nuisance, but nothing to be worried about." Easy for him to say, harder for Alex to swallow when it just seems like that much more time needed to heal. Thank you all for your continued prayers! Check out the baby's site and meet our new little angel! :)

There's No Place Like Home

We have been home for a little less than a week now...there really is no place like home. Alex is feeling much better. His incision continues to heal. We are still packing one spot where fluid was an issue, but the rest of it looks great. The place they removed is almost completely healed already! I learned right after I posted the previous post that it was not a granuloma...but "hypergranulized tissue" or "proud flesh". We liked the "proud flesh" name as our church's last sermon series included a sermon on how to eliminate "pride" in your daily life :). Alex's outings have included a couple of walks, a trip to his parent's house for dinner, Olive Garden, church, the doctor's office today, and hopefully we will make it to the sporting goods store today to shop for new fancy tennis shoes for his birthday. We have not yet pinned down what Friday's festivities will include for his 28th birthday bash. We'll have to see what he's up for.

My mom has been in town for a few days now helping get some things finished around the house and helping take care of Alex when I'm out running errands. So far we've removed wallpaper, she's started painting almost all of the remaining trim/cabinets and we have plans to finish doors and prime the future nursery. Thursday is our first ultrasound, so there's been lots of talk about how to paint/decorate the baby's room depending on the gender. We are so very excited to find out what sex this little person is who is growing inside of me! Mostly, I can't wait for Alex and I to be able to talk to it and start calling him "him" or her "her" instead of "IT"! I plan on giving the baby his/her very own blog site after Thursday, so I'll post a link to it here as well :).

Not for the sensitive stomach

We have met with the surgeons and ET nurses so far and are waiting to get in to see the GI and Intestinal rehab people any minute now. It was a very eventful morning...Alex had a granuloma on the side of his stoma that they "excised" right there in the little appointment room. We thought it was just part of his stoma, but it turns out that it was extra tissue that was doubling the size of the stoma (or what we thought was the stoma). The granuloma was harmless tissue that just built up as things healed, but was not supposed to be there. So, they removed it! Just like that. Numb him up and snip it off! I, of course, watched the whole thing...fascinating. A few minutes, lots of blood, and some silver nitrate later and he was all fixed up. The ET nurses said this is fairly common and often gets mistaken for part of the stoma (even by other nurses), so it was good that we were here for follow up for them to catch it.

We will find out more about what medicines Alex will be on at this next appointment with Dr. Shen. Then intestinal rehab will hopefully let us know the results of a series of nutritional blood tests they ran on the day Alex discharged from the hospital.

Pictures

Here are a few pictures taken over the last couple of days. It sure is amazing how quickly you get spoiled by constant Internet access! It was strange not being able to just pop online and update or send a quick email.

Alex taking his first stroll to the end of the driveway and back. In the background is Gloria and John's home. You can't see it very well, but the white house on the left is the original farmhouse and the brick house was built-on later.
Only two of about 200 pictures of this cute little deer family that lives around the house. The top picture is of the whole fam...buck, doe and two babies in the front yard. The bottom picture is the two babies in the side yard. They were almost always lounging around the yard outside the screened-in porch. That made for a good picture spectator spot.

Quick update

Hello all! Alex is getting some much needed R&R after 7 days of getting poked on every 2 hours. We had a bit of a scare yesterday morning as he woke up and got sick right away. We called the doctor, who put him back on liquids and off his fiber supplements for now. He did not feel sick for the rest of the day, but took it easy and rested anyway. By the evening, he was downstairs watching TV and chatting with Gloria, John, and Gloria's mother for a couple of hours. He is feeling much better today and has re-introduced some food without any signs of nausea! He even suggested we go to the movies this afternoon, so we went and saw "Ice Age" at the local movie theater. He continues working on keeping up his intake of liquids as dehydration can come on quickly and really impact how he feels. We have a picture or two to share when we can get a bit longer Internet access, so stay tuned ;).