Surgery Update!

A little recap before I go into detail with what went down on January 31st - the day of my surgery.

On September 6th, 2018,  I had something called the LADD procedure to get rid of my Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome (SMAS). It had been 286 days of not being able to eat or drink normally up to the day of surgery.  I was excited because it was laparoscopic and it was minimally invasive. The LADD procedure was successful in that my SMAS was gone! My surgeon, Dr. Petty, was able to move everything behind the Superior Mesenteric Artery, so that it was no longer able to compress my duodenum. More specifically, he cut the ligament of Treitz and was then able to move my large intestine from the right side of my body to the left side. He then moved my small intestine from the left side of my body to the right side. He also removed my appendix as a precaution. The night of surgery, I was able to drink water - something that I hadn't been able to do in nearly 9 months.  Soon after that, I was able to eat very small portions of soft foods. Sadly, my ability to eat began to diminish. By December, I was only able to keep down clear liquids and it didn't take long for me to get extremely weak. I was beginning to faint and the path I was headed on could have been really bad. We met with doctors and got several tests done. They revealed that my duodenum and gallbladder were both not working properly. After a serious conversation with my surgeon and family, we were all in agreement that the only way that I was going to have a chance to get better was with surgery.

Here I am now. Seven days ago I had major abdominal surgery. I essentially had four different surgeries in one. Unlike the LADD procedure, this surgery was done open - NOT laparoscopically. We honestly didn't know exactly what my surgeon was going to find, because current testing isn't able to show every little detail. We knew that my duodenum was holding food in the section 2 (the duodenum has 4 different sections). We knew that bile was backing up into my stomach. We knew that I was unable to eat or drink hardly anything at all. We knew that I was back to being in severe pain.  The four tests that I had done showed that things were not working the right way. We knew pretty quickly that surgery was necessary.

I am going to try my best to explain exactly what they did and what was found in surgery, but I am not a doctor so bear with me. My surgeon, Dr. Petty, found that my large bowel decided to flip back to the right side of my body. Unfortunately, because everything had been switched around during the LADD procedure, it did not leave much room for my large bowel (that's why it was moved to the LEFT SIDE). They saw that my large bowel was pressing down onto my duodenum. This caused my duodenum to sink into a crevasse, which was then held down by adhesions! If you are unsure about what an adhesion is, think about it as really really thick webs of glue. In surgery, Dr. Petty had to move the large bowel back to the left side and sutured it in place this time. He also removed my gallbladder. After this, he cut the adhesions from my duodenum and built up the crevasse with tissue so that the duodenum would not ever sink in that crevasse again. After all that, he surgically placed a Gastro-Jejunal (GJ) feeding tube. The purpose of the GJ tube is to ensure that I am able to get enough nutrition (from the tube feeds) until I am able to eat enough orally. Not only is it in place for nutritional purposes, but it is actually keeping my stomach up far enough so that it does not mess with any of the things done during surgery. The hope is that adhesions form and make a natural barrier between this and the duodenum so that no issues can occur again.

It was a very long surgery that is requiring quite a bit of recovery. It hasn't been easy, to say the least.  Right now it is taking a lot of energy (that I don't really have) to write this post.  When I feel up to it, though, I would like to share just how difficult this recovery has been.  I have had to dig deeper than I ever have to get through each day.