A few months ago haili started getting intense pains in her bowels. We took her to ER on two different occasions and one time they told us that she had pregnancy pains and the FLU. The Second time they gave her high amounts of Morphine and Dilaudid and it didn't even work. That is some intense pain! They did an MRI and came to the conclusion that she has Intusseption (When part of your bowel swallows/overlaps the other part.). They then sent us home and told us that there was nothing we could do since she is pregnant. All they instructed us to do were to wait and if the pain lasts longer than 6 hours to go into the ER. Over the next few weeks Haili endured these pains for hours at a time.
On Monday night I dropped Haili off at work at 7pm. At 2am Tuesday morning she called me and asked me to come get her and that an episode was starting again. I took her home and within minutes she said she had to go to the hospital. I grabbed her and took her to Labor and Delivery instead of the ER. We got her there and they gave her some Dilaudid, and it didn't touch her pain again. The Nurse there realized that this is something that needs to be dealt with and not dismissed. They gave her an epidural and then ordered a CT scan. After the results came back our room was bombarded with Nurses, Doctors, Surgeons, Residents, etc... They said her bowels are twisted and had no blood in them. They said they had to get her to the OR immediately or that she would die.
The first Surgery was Tuesday morning and after the Doctor (Stevens) came out and said that what she has is very serious. It is called MAL-ROTATION of the BOWEL. When we are still in the womb our insides go out from our body, rotate and then go back in. When she was in the womb it did not rotate/or rotate correctly. Usually it causes pain to the infant from 1 month to 1 year. Haili lived a pain free life until she got pregnant and her uterus started expanding. The Surgeon said that when they opened her up that her Bowels were Black and dark Purple instead of Pink. They were going to remove her Bowels and put her on an IV Feed for the rest of her life. Given that she is 22 yrs old and pregnant, they decided to take a chance to give her a normal life. They took out bowels out and untwisted them 720 degrees. When her bowels twisted it cut off all the blood flow and thus caused the pain. As they untwisted them they noticed that a few parts started getting some good color back. They made a decision to leave her open for 8 hours to give her bowels a chance to heal.
The following 8 hours were tough. She was intibated and paralyzed since they could not have her move, cough, etc... Her stomach was wide open with plastic covering the bowels. There were worries about the Baby and whether or not she would need to be delivered or even survive all that Hail’s body was going through. At 8pm surgery started again and a few hours later the surgeon came out and told us what had happened. He said that 60% of her bowels he regained the PINK color. He said that he was cautiously optimistic that Haili might be alright. They decided to leave her open once more but this time until Thursday morning. They wanted to give her bowels more time to heal. The options of the third surgery were:
1) See that they are healed and sew her back up.
2) Cut out the dead parts of the bowel and stitch the good parts together.
This was a big risk in itself since she was contracting a little bit, she has the chance of infection and other effects. On Wednesday afternoon they took the paralytic medicine off and she woke up very slowly, but only to have her arms tied down and sedatives in place so that she would not move or freak out. All she could do was nod her head yes or no to questions and eventually write questions she had on pieces of paper. She was miserable and in very bad shape. She handled the tubes, in mouth, throat, nose very well and remained calm.
Thursday morning they operated one last time. It went great! The Surgeons were amazed that her bowels had just about healed (with the exceptions of a few dark spots). They sewed her back up and since then she has been in the Shock Trauma ICU. In the last few days she has had some Ups and some Downs. She has had some post surgery complications but has fought through them. She has been very strong. She is still very weak and tired. It is hard to talk to her since she does not have much energy, however between writing on paper and whispering words she has managed to keep her sense of humor. Things are looking good and it will be a long road to recovery. We are so fortunate that so many Doctors and Nurses gave extra care to her. Everyone in the whole hospital knew about her and would have done anything for her. We are thankful that this time a Surgeon had the courage to open up a 22 year old pregnant woman without really knowing what he was going to see. If he would have waited she would have died. With the exception of a few crappy doctors that led up to this event, we received above and beyond care from the best Doctors in the state.
We have witnessed a MIRACLE. She either should have died, lost the baby, or lost her bowels. She went from WORST CASE scenario to BEST CASE! We are so grateful for all the prayers, Phone Calls, Texts, Flowers, Fast’s, etc... We will never know who all prayed for us, or who all fasted us (There were many) but to those of you who did and are still doing so, THANK YOU!!! We know that through all these things Haili was saved and so was our baby (Grace). We still need your payers since this is not over yet.
Thank you everyone!
After Surgery #1
After Surgery #2
After Surgery #3
