Fistula

Well, here we go again.

This morning they took us down to pre-op around 11:30am. Right before that we lost the IV access in Caleigh's arm. Eric and I convinced the nurse to wait on trying to find another spot because the anesthesiologist would be doing that anyways and Caleigh would be asleep. They did end up getting access after sticking her over 12 times. Unfortunately, the IV is now in her juggler on the left side of her neck. It looks painful and with as much movement as she does I'm not sure it will last long, but I'm hoping it does.

The procedure went well. Our doctor started out doing the endoscope, going in from the top and checking out Caleigh's fundoplacation. All looked well with it. Then he moved to the colonoscopy were he found what he believes is a fistula. You can see it in the pictures above. Yes, that is Caleigh's colon. Yes, she will probably kill me for putting up colon pictures some day! Each of the shots is of the hole or fistula. It is located about 37cm from the rectum.

"A fistula is an abnormal connection between an organ, vessel, or intestine and another structure. Fistulas are usually the result of injury or surgery. It can also result from infection or inflammation. Inflammatory bowel disease, such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, is an example of a disease that leads to fistulas between one loop of intestine and another."

We are waiting for biopsy results referring to these conditions, but other than the one spot everything looked fairly normal. The thought is that this fistula is connecting the small intestine to the colon. When food passes through the small intestine at this site it releases a large portion of food through the hole and straight into the colon cause the dumping syndrome. It is bi-passing a large portion of Caleigh's small intestine.

So tomorrow we are taking Caleigh down for a barium enema. The other day we looked from above with barium and this time we will look from below. We will also meet with our surgeon tomorrow. Caleigh will have to have another surgery to correct this problem. We aren't sure when yet, but soon is probably a good guess.

We went ahead and did an ABR hearing test. This is done under anesthesia so they tagged along at the end of the scopes. What they found is that Caleigh is hearing normal and high pitches well but that her left ear could be missing low pitches if they aren't loud enough. This is not a severe hearing loss. We are going to schedule another ABR and an awake testing procedure as well. The audiologist told us that they usually do 2-3 tests before they can make a solid diagnosis. Caleigh understands us. She hears us. We may just need to tweak a few things so that she can hear every pitch.

Tomorrow should be interesting with the enema and meeting with our surgeon. I am trying to Tweet as much as possible, but I don't think I am as committed as some are. I'll try to get a little more consistent during this hospital stay, but no promises when we get home. Things tend to be boring and you don't want to read about what we had for dinner and what junk mail I got that day......stupid things like that! For now I will try my best.