A Surgical Story Part One: The Modus Operandi

All hail the marvels of modern medical technology. Four short days ago, my son was wheeled into a hospital room from the recovery room looking quite green around the gills and looking like it would be some time before he would be up and around. By the time Sunday night came around (and he'd been home a mere 24 hours), he said his stomach felt like it does after completing the last of 100 sit-ups. By Monday morning, this number was reduced to 25. Not bad for gastrointestinal surgery; not bad at all. Frankly, I'm amazed.

Last Friday, July 7, my son underwent laparoscopic surgery to have repaired whatever it was that was making him vomit on a regular basis two to three times a week. This was occurring at the same time, early morning, and once he was finished he felt fine and life went on normally until the next bout. If this had been my teenaged daughter, I would've been certain the girl was pregnant. After much second guessing and being told what the problem wasn't, an upper GI series test provided the answer to his problem. A diagnosis of malrotation of the bowel was confirmed and surprisingly, this is a congenital defect that is generally discovered in infants and very young children--not young men on the verge of turning 18. Who knew? Who suspected? This symptom began to manifest just several months ago, was quite sporadic at first and then began to occur more and more frequently.

I won't go into a long song and dance about what this condition entails exactly (anyone that interested can look it up easily enough on the Internet). The surgeon with whom we met for an initial consultation regarding surgery told us that until he was able to look around inside, he wouldn't be sure exactly what would be needed to be done to "fix" the problem. Therefore, my son was going to wake up with either four very small incisions or a more traditional long incision across his belly when he came to in the recovery room. Happily, everything went extremely well and he ended up with only three small, very neat (and I don't mean "cool") incisions. The surgeon removed a great deal of scar tissue which had been developing over time across the Duodenum which is a narrow tube at the end of the stomach which leads into the large intestine. Enough scar tissue had developed there to form the pressure of a very firm handshake and if left undiscovered would, in time, close things up completely, cut off the blood supply and the rest I'll leave to your imagination. Trust me, it wouldn't be good and quite likely fatal. Yikes!