Reherniation

Folks,

Last night, when Rose went to visit Jude, he was rather fussy and inconsolable to the point that he needed a dose of Ativan to calm down. When his nurse did a routine check for "residuals" -- food, mucus, bile, etc. that's sitting in his stomach -- she pulled out a lot of milk and a little bit of bile through the tube that goes through his nose down into his stomach. The amount was much more than we had ever seen come out of his stomach before, and it suggested that his food wasn't moving through his stomach and bowel like it should.

An x-ray ultimately revealed that the AlloDerm patch that was used to close up the hole in Jude's diaphragm appears to have at least partially broken down, and his bowel has apparently shifted up toward his chest, although we're not yet certain how far it's moved. In short, Jude's diaphragm has reherniated and will need to have surgery to have it fixed again.

Dr. Hebra, the pediatric surgeon who did Jude's original hernia repair, is out of town for the next week, but the other surgeon from his group who saw Jude this morning apparently expressed a strong preference that Dr. Hebra do the follow-up surgery to fix Jude's reherniation. Jude's internal anatomy is unique because of the abdominal infection that caused his bowel to become all fused together, so it's important that the surgeon who's seen his insides before also do the follow-up surgery.

For now, Jude is stable -- his reherniation hasn't hindered his breathing or caused any other really serious problems. His feeds have been suspended for now, but because he needs fluid and nutrients, he's already had an IV put in. He'll probably get a PICC today so that he can get some nutrition intravenously until the doctors are ready to see how he handles the reintroduction of a little milk.

Will you all please pray that Jude remains stable and as comfortable as possible until he can get his surgery to repair the reherniation? God's done many amazing things with Jude in his short life, and although we're very disappointed by this latest setback, we're confident that He can bring about the healing that our little boy needs.

We'll hopefully have more info on Jude's condition later today after Rose has gone to rounds with the doctors, so I'll try to post another update later today if we learn anything else. Thank you for reading and for your prayers!