Was heading to my baby shower and ended up in E Surgery!

Here is my story to share.  This turned to be non baby related and non WLS realted just a realy fluke.  Also very rare in adults.  Dr. Huse was the doc on call from my group so he was the lucky one who got to see me.  He was great. I was his first case ever, in fact they think I may be the first case anyone recalls at St. V.  ( BTW Doc Huse was awesome, had never met him before and would highly recomend!)

Also did some looking around about it today, so rare in adults that like Mt. Siani in New York has only had something like 13 adult cases ever!

Here was my email to my friends I sent when I got home yesterday.

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Hi all. I just wanted to try to give you a update on me and baby Emily.  I will try to keep this brief as a ling story can be.  Bottom line, you life is so precious and could be taken so quickly.  Please don’t ever waste a moment of it.  I know I never will again.

 

Saturday around 11:00 and we were on our way to our family baby shower in Cincy.  We made it to the Shelbyville exit and was going to stop to grab a quick bite to eat and I had to go to the rest room.  Well I was in the rest room for a while after I went potty with what started off right out the gate as major stomach pains. I came out and told Lance to eat without me I was going to “go and work through this".  Well another decent time later I came back out in tear, the pain had gotten so severe and I had started to get nausea.  So I called my doc who thought it was a flu bug at first, did not sound baby related.  All I knew was it was the worst pain I had ever felt in my life and I have a pretty high tolerance for pain.  So for a split second I thought let’s just go find the Shelbyville hospital and get it checked out, this will probably pass.  Then I thought no lets head back to St. V Carmel because if this is baby related she need to be at a level 3 NICU.  This was the first life saving ( no joke) decision of the day. ( had I stayed in a small town hospital who knows what the outcome may have been) So at record land speed, Lance gets me to St. V’s Carmel.  By this time I was so bent over, dry heaving ( because I had nothing to throw up, had not eaten since dinner the night before) I was crying like a baby and in the official worst pain of my life.  They rush me up to the Labor and Delivery floor, immediately hook me up to check the baby, monitor contractions, draw blood and on and on.  The ob from my office on call comes in and pretty quickly rules out anything baby related, Emily had a great strong heartbeat, etc.  The really could not tell if I have having contractions on the monitor because I was moving around so much from the pain, but because this pain was constant they pretty much ruled that out. 

 

So next life saving decision was on the part of my OB to call in one of the gastro intestinal specialist that I have seen in the past.  He pretty quickly thinks it could be a twisted bowel.  The options are to wait it out and see what it does or to go in laproscopicly and look at whets going on.  Of course being pregnant no one if ever a fan of surgery right.  By this time they had given me three vials of pain killers, two of them morphine and nothing was touching this pain.  Last life saving decision goes to my husband  who steps in and says surgery and now.  So this is like 3:45 or so, they come back and say they have put me on the board for the next open spot which was 7 PM. Dear Lord please just stop this pain is all I can think.  They finally find a drug ****tail of Delodid (sp?) that seems to take just enough edge off that I can at least sit up at this point.  They take me back at 7 PM , they immediately find the situation is much more serious than just a twisted bowel.  I had intussusceptions.  For some unknown uncaused reason my bowel started to telescope back onto its self.  Here is a medical def : the small intestine  slides into another part of the intestine. This "telescoping" often blocks the intestine, preventing food or fluid from passing through. Intussusception also cuts off the blood supply to the part of the intestine that's affected. 

 

So after trying to straighten it out for over an hour, they decided to make a incision and go in to fixed it openly.  No to be too graphic or gross but they basically pulled out 12-18 inches of my bowel straightened it back out then put it back in.  By the time they had pulled it out it had lost all blood flow and was deep purple/black, not good.  Luckily once they got it pulled apart the blood flow started right back up and they did not have to remove any portion.  So for what they thought might take 45 minutes to unkink, took more like 3 hours. I was waking up around 10:30 PM, so it was a solid 3 hours.  Emily came through all this with flying colors.  She was a champ and did really well , now that I am oak, Emily watch 2010 starts.

 

Part two of the story in case you need popcorn. 

 

The biggest worry with surgery and being pregnant is that the blood contact from the surgery to the uterus can cause contractions and preterm labor.  So for my recovery I was in L&D  so they can keep an eye on this.  I could not feel anything from being all drugged up, but I was having contractions from midnight on.  They gave me two shots of Terbutline(sp?) through the night and it did not stop them.  My cervices was no dilated so no real preterm labor action other than the contracts.  Sunday morning my OB consults with the Fetal Maternal Medicine ppl, ( high risk doc).  My ob was not all that worried about the contractions because they were not all that hard and I did not really have any other preterm things going on.  After she talked to them this is where my maternal worry kicked in.  They said I must get these contractions stopped completely and they wanted me to have two shots of the steroids that boost Emilys lungs and development in case she comes early. ( my ob had even mentioned earlier before she had talked to the high risk guys that , we don’t like to give the steroid shots to “willy nilly" because they are most effective 48- 5 days before they really think they baby will come!) Good news is the higher level drugs they gave me every 6 hours to stop the contractions, worked.   They would not release me from the hospital till they had stopped all the way and they have.  Emily has had two good steroid shots so if she does decide to make an appreance early she should be better off now.

 

Soooo I am at home now, just bed rest and taking it easy for me.  Not just from the recovery from the surgery, but being to active can send me back into those contractions, and well we don’t want that.  

 

So all is well that ends well.  Thank you to everyone for the calls and emails, sorry  I have been so slow to get back to everyone.  My throat is really irritated from all the nausea then the surgery tube, and such that I have not really been up to talking very much.  I have written this email in like 5 segments because my energy level is at about zero -1.

 

I love you all very much.  So sorry to my family for not making the shower, I felt so bad.  Huge thanks to my father in law for boosting my sprits by 10,000 mile for coming over from Cincy to bring a few of our gifts ( and these super awesome cookies!!).  Seeing her little things really made my day. 

 

Kim, Lance and Emily

OMG Kim! And I thought my pregnancy was eventful! I'm so sorry you went through that and so glad that everything is ok (and little Miss Emily has behaved herself!) . I"m a pediatric nurse, so I'm very familiar with intussception, but have never seen it in an adult. Leave it to you to be the case in a million! :) Take care and rest up!

Very scary stuff!  So glad everything turned out well!

Wowee, have you been through the wringer!  So glad you and Emily are ok!

Wow, no time to make popcorn, I was hanging on the edge of my seat!    Thank God you and Emily are both doing ok!   Thanks for sharing your story.  Who would have imagined all this could happen!   And look at all the chances for wrong decisions to have affected the outcome.  God was working overtime with you that day honey! 

Thank you!  It was a wild ride to say the least.  The recovery has been so tough this week becasue they have me on a very very low dose of pain meds for the baby and so I cna feel any contractions.  I feel o.k. for the first hour or so after I take them, can make my self a drink check my email etc, after that I can barely even sit in a chair it hurts.

Ya, Melissa, they said its very rare in adults, but whats even more rare is that there was no leading edge.  He said in adults there is always some type of tumor, palup, adheasion, something that causes it. You are the first person who has heard of it.  The only worry my husband and I are left with is, was there a leading edge some where that they just did not see, so would it be back or worse is there something else there that they are missing? Your thoughts??

Kim, I am so glad you are ok.  You and Emily are certainly in my prayers and Lance too!!!  I will pray for the miracles to come your way.  Sounds like you already have had at least one!!!  :)

Take care of yourself and can't wait to see Miss Emily's first pictures!

Huge hugz,
Tracy