Marianne’s Return To The Hospital

On August 22, just after celebrating Katie’s first month of life, Marianne was admitted back into the hospital for surgery. Complications following the surgery resulted in a 9-day hospital stay. Following is the story of what will hopefully soon become a distant nightmare.

We think this all began when Katie was born. During the C-section, the doctor found a large number of fibroids. At that time he removed one, but said that many more were left – including one as large as a cantaloupe! He left the others because Marianne had lost so much blood. Everyone assumed these fibroids would just shrink and “go away”.

At about 4am on the morning of August 22, Marianne woke-up with severe abdominal pain. By 5am, Eric realized that we needed to call a doctor. The most logical doctor to call was her OB/GYN since they were familiar with her recent history. They sent us to the emergency room where we ended up spending the entire day. Test after miserable, invasive test was performed to rule out gall bladder, liver or digestive problems. Finally, they did a CT scan, which showed a large (16cm) “mass” in her lower abdomen. At 5pm, the emergency room doctor called in the OB/GYN and they determined that the “mass” was actually a large fibroid. It was being depleted of its blood supply and was “dying”. It had to come out.

At 7pm, Marianne had an operating room with her name on it. The doctor arranged for one of Katie’s nurses to bring Katie to meet her mommy just before going into surgery! The surgery went fine and Marianne came out feeling remarkably good. The doctor called the 800gram fibroid “Katie’s ugly twin” and he even took Polaroid photos of it! Yuck! Not the souvenir you want to bring home from your average vacation (but what’s been average about this?).

The next day, Marianne seemed fine. Everyone was encouraged by her post-surgical abdominal strength. What was not going well, however, was her ability to digest her liquid diet. She began feeling nauseous and nothing would stay down. Her OB/GYN was nervous and called-in a surgeon. Apparently, a common complication is that occurs after abdominal surgery is that the intestines “go on strike” and stop working. Basically, they go to sleep and decide not to wake up. Another thing that can happen is that they can become twisted, forming a kink or blockage. One or both of these things happened, but we’ll never know exactly.

Because of this intestinal shut-down, they inserted a tube in Marianne’s nose that went into her stomach to pull-out everything, allowing her intestines to rest. It was still unknown if additional surgery would be required. This tube was very painful and awkward. It stayed in for 4 days. Every morning they took X-rays, looking for change. There was very little. The entire process became very discouraging. Finally, the doctor suggested a different test (fluoroscopy) that would allow them to take another look at things in a more active way. After the 6 hour test, the radiologist confirmed that the intestines seemed to be working again! At 10pm that night, the tube was removed. Words can’t explain how happy we were to know things were finally going the right way.

The doctors put Marianne on a liquid diet (remember, she still hadn’t had any solid food for 8 days!) and it went well. She even felt up to a visit to the nursery to see Katie (this was the day Katie moved out of her isolette into an open crib!!!). The next day, she was eating “real” food – if you can call hospital cuisine “real”. On Friday, August 30, the doctor announced that Marianne could sleep in her own bed. It was time to go home.

Marianne wasn’t the only one who had been away from her bed. Eric had spent every night in the hospital through this entire bad dream. During the day, he and Marianne’s mom were at her bedside all the time fluffing pillows, holding barf buckets, calling nurses, feeding her ice, and holding her hand through all the painful and scary waiting that you do when you’re in the hospital. Thank God it’s now over. We have so much to look forward to. Katie will come home soon.