A Plug?

Remember me posting about the excessive amounts of mucous found during Ashley's scope?

Well, from what we can figure out it seems that the mucous formed a plug and basically caused all of the hours of discomfort Ash was having yesterday. At some point(after giving her some kind of something? I'm not sure what it was. Kind of described to me like the old time Castor oil) the plug broke free and the fluid came gushing out of her stoma into her ostomy bad. Like 375ccs in less than 2 minutes! Ashley was screaming and extremely uncomfortable, but once it broke through she was able to relax a little. She continued to have abdominal cramping and lots of pain, but eventually she drifted into a fitful sleep and although exhausted this morning she is stooling freely. All I can say is that I am thankful it wasn't the more serious complications we were fearing, but at the same time I hope it NEVER happens to her again.

She obviously doesn't feel well this morning, but she isn't screaming and moaning. I am so thankful she is feeling a little better. Last night was miserable and frightening.

The surgeon just rounded and said it all makes sense. We get lots of mucous from the "mucosa" (the lining of the bowel) and that Ashely's bowel is severely injured from this episode of rejection. She is "far from it being healed and all better" so he wants to scope again on Monday. He said the pathologist officially said that there is "treated rejection" not "healed rejection". Until the pathology comes back with word that the bowel is healed then we tread lightly because she could have the rejection begin to spread again. I did not realize that until this moment. I thought she was in the clear, but apparently not. This is his explanation for the large amounts of stool continuing without any positive culture results. She's looking at a long recovery, but it may not all have to take place in Omaha. I'm holding on to that hope. He said the good news is that she has mucosa returning and in the initial pathology results there was no mucosa seen. So I shared with him that I am going to be thankful for that. We have mucosa. It is in the process of healing, and some day we may get a ticket to go closer to home. We are all working on that.

The other issue he shared with me is this. "We've got her immunosuppression all screwed up!" He said, "I don't know what is going on with that." Her levels of both drugs are extremely high making the hospital a very dangerous place for her to live. She literally could catch anything. So I said, "Basically, I don't allow anyone to touch her?" He laughed and shook his head and said, "Basically. We're working on the problem."

So the long and short of it? I'm thankful she is recovering. I'm hoping the rejection does not begin to spread again. I'm going to be even more diligent with limiting those who enter our room(their gonna love for me this one! Just kidding. They are actually pretty great about it this time.) She is weak this morning, but not screaming in pain. Her daddy misses her like crazy and requested this picture of her even though I warned him she doesn't look that great this morning. He doesn't care. He needs to see her today(sorry about the hair. She's refusing to have it done today). I've got to figure out how to run the laundry back and forth across the hospital(I hate doing laundry here and it just reminds me how thankful I am going to be when I get to go home and do load after load after load in our little yellow house). I miss the kids like crazy. God is still good, and He continues to bless us even during these difficult times.

Hope your day is blessed. Trish