Post Op Disaster

Two weeks after his op Charlie stopped pooing! It had started as a normal day, but mid morning Charlie fed and was sick quite a bit of milk. I didn't think much about it as Charlie had been having a few milky vomits with suspected reflux.  However, early afternoon Charlie started to bring up a yellow bile. When my mum came to visit after work he was sick again. He hadn't been to the toilet that day yet and his tummy was now slightly distended. Davy had hurt his eye in work so he was actually already at the royal for the eye clinic, so mum and I drove over with Charlie. 

When we had been discharged after the op one of the stoma nurses had told me that if we ever had any concerns come straight to A&E as it could be a serious infection called Enterocolitis. She said let them know at reception that Charlie has HD and that we need to be seen urgently. I did this and within 10mins we were being seen in triage. I was then told to go back to the waiting room but that there was only one patient in front of us and Dr would see us. Credit to the A&E staff we were in a cubicle being seen by Drs within 30mins of being in A&E. 

A Dr came in and I explained all about Charlie's condition and operation and what was now going on with him. I also mentioned that our surgeon Irene had advised no one was to insert anything into Charlie’s bum other than her due to his operation. The Dr in A&E knew I wanted to see one of the surgical team, so a call was made to them. 

One of the surgeons Mohan came down and had a look and feel of Charlie's tummy. They did blood tests on Charlie straight away to identify if there was an infection and did an x-ray too. I'd been told at this point that we would be admitted so my dad arrived for mum and they went back to mine to get Charlie and I emergency hospital essentials!! Davy finally got out of the eye clinic and came straight over to us. 

By this point Dr Mohan had arrived, they had ruled out Enterocolitis but his bloods showed an infection of some sort. The X ray also showed an inflammation of his bowel so Mohan wanted to do a washout. The result was normal but they still didn't know what was wrong. 

The following day the posse of Drs came around and they discussed Charlie. It was hard to tell if possibly the slight infection showing in his bloods could be causing his bowels to stop working, but they couldn't tell for sure. We were pretty much just observed and washouts were done as normal. Charlie was also tolerating feeds better again. After 2 days on the Barbour ward, as Charlie's bowel was no longer inflamed and he was feeding fine, we were again discharged! Our plan was to continue the washouts and also to trial suppositories.

Our post surgery review with Irene was two weeks away so she said if anything concerned me to come to her clinic before the appointment. 

We were home a week and Charlie still wasn't passing poo or wind again. I was distraught as it felt like the operation had failed and I was worried about him and how long until he would poo again! My dad and I went back to the royal one week ahead of our review appointment and saw Irene. She was lovely and fitted us in between other appointments. She examined Charlie and I discussed the washouts and suppositories.

I explained how the washouts were fine but the suppositories were incredibly difficult as Charlie would be hysterical for at least an hour afterwards and they generally didn't give any result. Irene said to stop them and just focus on washouts and getting Charlie's bowel empty on a daily basis. 

Davy and I then went back one week later. Irene explained that it was still so close to his operation that we had to be patient as his bowel may just begin working again. I found it hard to get past the thought that this was it for Charlie that he would never poo and how would we all cope as he got bigger!

Again we went home with the plan to continue washouts. We got back into a routine of doing washouts and recording the results again.

After this post op appointment we both struggled to be positive. We couldn’t get out of our minds that we fully expected to be going into our review shouting about how great Charlie was passing poo and wind. Yet, we didn’t have a choice; we just had to get on with things as best as we could and focus on the fact that Charlie was so content and continuing to thrive!

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