Owen's second surgery was Oct 22nd, 2009. It was almost exactly one month after his first surgery. A week before the surgery they were worried because Owen was not pooping. The surgery team came in and checked him out. They found that his bowel had perforated. This means that, due to the surgery he had already been through and the starting of his feeds again, his bowel "burst" (for lack of a better word) and created a hole in his intestine. The surgeons were not surprised given the extreme bowel resection he had been through prior.
The surgeon and the neonatologist wanted to have a meeting with us to discuss options. When you go into a meeting to discuss "options" you never know what to expect. We were certainly not expecting them to say so plainly what they said.
I will never forget it.
The surgeon was late
He came in, sat down, and said
"I can do this surgery but there really is no point. He won't survive long after surgery."
That's it
plain and simple
We were shocked
The reason the surgeon said this:
1. he didn't believe Owen would even survive the first surgery
2. He thought that they would have to remove another larger amount of bowel
The doctor asked us if we would like to do the surgery or not. To us it was no question. If we didn't do the surgery, Owen would definitely die. If we did do the surgery, Owen would probably die. To us it was simple. Do everything in your power to save our child.
So they did
Surgery is always so scary. Sitting in the waiting room waiting for a doctor to come in and tell you everything went great. This surgery was only 2 hours. They came in and said that they only had to remove a few centimeters of bowel. We were so thankful!
Owen recovered quickly from this second surgery, we were blessed!
Wow!!
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