Thursday, January 22, 2009

Round #1-yesterday's exam

We are so sorry it has taken so long to update everyone. There have been doctors, social workers, dietitians, nurses and case managers in and out since 6:00, and most of them have visited with us more than once. We're going to post this one piece at a time since there is so much info with a "putting it all together" at the end...stay with us...

Here's what we found out yesterday during the examination under anesthesia, with a bit of clarification from further questioning today.
The positives:
-no abscesses were found that needed incision and drain placement
-the rectum for the most part looked very healthy (more on this to follow)
-Alex was only under for approximately 30 minutes, so the procedure was very short
-the doctor obtained biopsies from the lower 1/2 to 1/3 of colon to try and find an infectious complication (same things the previous bloodwork was looking at).

The negatives:
-Alex's Crohn's disease continues to be very severe. He has a small hole (fistula) in part of his lower large intestine, but it is draining on it's own and is not infected at this time.
-due to the severity of inflammation, the doctor did not feel that it was safe to scope into the upper part of the large intestine, so we had to rely on the CT for that alone.

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