Brother update
My brother is still in hospital but thankfully out of the high dependency ward. Not sure if I mentioned in my other post but he has had major stomach and bowel surgery to remove damage caused by Chrohn's disease. He has had three sections of his intestines and bowels removed, included a mass of dead tissue / puss / septic mess which according the surgeon was 'horrific' and the size of a rugby ball. Post surgery he has had several methods of pain killing including epidural, steroids and morphine tap. He has also had two blood transfusions. He can;t walk anywhere at the minute. But he's alive, and will get better just need to be confident and supportive of him on the long road to recovery.
Below is the medical type version of this sent from my step mother to her brother.
Samuel has been really ill. He hasn't eaten properly for weeks and been in a lot of pain. They were treating it with steroids but he got steadily worse.
They finally took him to theatre on Friday for over 3 hours. they found a real mess. lots of adhesions and a mass the size of a rugby ball made up of fibrous dead tissue and pus.
Unfortunately they have had to resect 3 pieces of bowel and anastomose them back together
Post op he became very ill , septic with a heart rate of 200 and they transferred him to HDU.
He came back to the surgical ward today in a bay where they can continue the close and regular obs on him
He is much better but of course not out of the woods. Still not eaten anything, numerous drains, epidural and 3 sets of IV antibiotics.
Hopefully he will continue to improve
The only thing I can add to that (in a very non-medical way) is that Samuel's bowels are currently "paralysed". Apparently this is a naturally occurring thing that they do when cut twice to remove "bad" bits.
Apart from being able - over time - to remove the various tubes and pipes (like epidural for one, and stomach drain (via his nose) for another) the next major stage is for his bowels to recover and start working. Samuel has been told that if they aint working by Wednesday they will feed him some liquid food (by tube intravenously I think), to see if that "wakes up" his bowels. That is the next hurdle.
Below is the medical type version of this sent from my step mother to her brother.
Samuel has been really ill. He hasn't eaten properly for weeks and been in a lot of pain. They were treating it with steroids but he got steadily worse.
They finally took him to theatre on Friday for over 3 hours. they found a real mess. lots of adhesions and a mass the size of a rugby ball made up of fibrous dead tissue and pus.
Unfortunately they have had to resect 3 pieces of bowel and anastomose them back together
Post op he became very ill , septic with a heart rate of 200 and they transferred him to HDU.
He came back to the surgical ward today in a bay where they can continue the close and regular obs on him
He is much better but of course not out of the woods. Still not eaten anything, numerous drains, epidural and 3 sets of IV antibiotics.
Hopefully he will continue to improve
The only thing I can add to that (in a very non-medical way) is that Samuel's bowels are currently "paralysed". Apparently this is a naturally occurring thing that they do when cut twice to remove "bad" bits.
Apart from being able - over time - to remove the various tubes and pipes (like epidural for one, and stomach drain (via his nose) for another) the next major stage is for his bowels to recover and start working. Samuel has been told that if they aint working by Wednesday they will feed him some liquid food (by tube intravenously I think), to see if that "wakes up" his bowels. That is the next hurdle.