12/03/08 Update: Aiden Nicolls

We had a little scare on Tuesday.
Basically, the doctors at Mercy were concerned about the lack of poop that Aiden was....pooping.
They also saw what they described as an "air bubble" in his intestines.
They performed a procedure where they put some dye(barium) and then take several x-rays over several hours so they can track the dye moving through his system.
Later that day, one of the doctors told us that the dye had moved through the area in question, however they were going to get a second opinion of a surgeon.
On Tuesday the surgeon called us and informed us that he had taken a look at the x-rays and felt Aiden was in need of immediate surgery.
The surgery could not be performed at Mercy since they did not have a pediatric anesthesiaologist on staff.
The surgery would have to be performed at Sutter Memorial off of 53rd street.

So we rushed down to Mercy, told Aiden how much we loved him and to continue to be the strong little fighter that he is.
We noticed right away at how blue Aiden's little belly was. We aren't 100% sure if it's from an infection or from the dye.
The Sutter NICU transport team showed up around 5pm.
They matched all of the various settings on all the machines to the transport equipment, made sure he was stable and Aiden took an ambulance ride to Sutter memorial.
Around 9pm they took Aiden in to the operating room.
We were told that the longer the operation took the better it would be.
If there was enough "good" intestine it would take the surgeon longer to get him sorted out.

Around 11pm one of the nurses poked her head in the waiting room and said the surgeon would be in in a few minutes, then gave us a quick little smile.

The surgeon came in and told us that everything went well and that he only had to remove a small section of intestine.
What happened was a bit of meconium had perforated his intestine and had caused an infection.
They are leaving and open end of his intestine out of his little body for 6-8 weeks until everything clears up and then he will require another surgery at that time to re-connect his bowels.
The surgeon told us this surgery is pretty routine and he doesn't forsee any problems.
Apparently this is a fairly common problem with preemies.

Around midnight Holly and I went to Aiden's bed to check on him and to say goodnight.
He didn't move at all. Normally when we touch his hand he would hold onto our finger a little.
He was OK, just the effects from the anesthesia.

He has backtracked a little in his developements from last week.

He is hanging in there though.