First setback

Until yesterday, Nel was being fed mostly through a feeding tube which went directly into her intestine. Yesterday evening, it was discovered that some of the food from that tube was coming out of the wound from the operation itself. This means that something has begun leaking somewhere, possibly from the tube itself. It may have happened during all the moving around yesterday or it could have happened earlier. What is certain is that the food from that tube should not be loose in her abdominal cavity.

So today, right now in fact, the doctors are going to open up the wound in her stomach and remove the feeding tube and wash out her abdominal cavity. At this time they are not planning to put a new feeding tube back in. Because she has been able to eat and digest food on her own, the feeding tube is not necessary any more.

In practical terms, the doctor has said that this will put her back about 4 days of healing time -- because the original incision has to be opened up again and will therefore have to heal again from the beginning.

This operation should itself take about an hour or so, and allowing time for anaesthesia and recovery, she should be out of her room for about two and a half hours. She will be coming back to her own room and they do not expect her to need to return to Intensive Care. So we expect her back around 1:30 or 2:00 our time this afternoon.

Nel is rather frightened by this development, as everything has been going so well. She felt very well this morning, so hearing this news was even more of an unpleasant surprise.

As we have developments we will certainly set them here. While anything is of course possible, I gather that the doctors do not expect any major setbacks or difficulties as a result of this second operation other than that the original wound will have to heal over again.

Paul is at the hospital and I have to go pick up the boys from school, then I expect we will go to the hospital this afternoon when she comes out of surgery.

Dad, I hope to send you an email for Thaxine tonight; it's been a bit of a buzz around here since this was discovered yesterday evening.