Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Around 1:45pm the Nurse Liasson came out and told us that Nathen is doing good and that they had done all four of his bone marrow biopsies and had taken out his old Broviack line ( his IV line in his chest) and placed the new one in. They had to replace this due to the fact that on Monday night when we were changing his dressing and replacing the caps on the end of it at home the end of it had cracked. We immediately cleaned it with alcohol and wrapped it up in sterile material to keep him from getting any bacteria into his blood stream. They also placed in a new infusiport ( the port under the skin and is accessed from outside the body with a special needle) so that when Nathen is a little further out from his chemo treatments he can have the needle out and not have things hanging from him and be a normal toddler for a change. At that time they will take out the new central line( a bedside procedure from what we were told) and then just have the port so he can get medicines when he needs them but not have a line hanging 24/7. This means he will be able to take baths, swim, play outside and do all the normal things that onry two year old boys do. They were just starting the main part of the surgery when she had come out and talked to us. They will cut his stomache across the bottom and then squeeze it back together the opposite direction and stitch it back together. From what I understand the bodies natural pull to go back into shape will pull the opening at teh bottom of his stomache open to allow food and bile to pass through. Hopefully this will fix his tummy and he will be able to eat and not be so nauseated all the time. We will be glad to get him off of the IV nutrition as it has caused him more problems than good. Please keep praying... I will update everyone as soon as I hear from the Dr.'s
Amanda

Nathen is out of surgery. He is doing good, as good as can be expected right out of surgery. He is breathing on his own and is sleeping comfortably. Dr. LaQuaglia had to remove Nathen's appendix due to it being displaced, it was moved up under his liver. He said it was better to remove it since it being under the liver could have hidden appendicitis if he ever got that in the future. He also did not cut his tummy the way he origionally planned. He looked at things and decided that just cutting that muscle around it to relax the muscle was a better plan. He said it seemed like the muscle was spasming and it would be better to just cut the muscle around it instead of slicing across the whole bottom of the stomache. we will let you know more as we know more. As of now he is doing great and on his way to recovering.
Thank you for your continued prayers,
Amanda