No News

This morning at 8:30 Nathan went to rediology for an 'Upper GI with Small Bowel Follow-Through' basically they were injecting contrast dye into his belly to see where it goes. After the dye was injected they did periodic x-rays all day long to follow the dye through his gut. For a while they were making us sit in the waiting room between x-rays but after a while Nathan was done, I was bored so we went back to his room. Then they started coming to us for x-rays, it was better that way.

We have no news from that study today. The last x-ray wasn't done until almost 9pm so the radiologist is going to review all the films tomorrow. The study he had yesterday was normal.

I talked to our surgeon in Boston today, Dr. B - we love her. She said that the cyst doesn't need to be removed right now, it can wait a while. Before she does remove it she wants an MRI done to look at the cyst and see which type of cyst it is. The radiologists in Boston said that what Albany Med is seeing as a cyst could just be a big gallbladder, so she wants the MRI before she does anything. Since he isn't having symptoms that are adversely affecting him she is going to wait on the surgery for a while. If the fistula is there then that changes things. The fistula would need to be repaired sooner rather than later and that would be an abdominal surgery. Since she would be in there anyway she would operate no the cyst at the same time. So then he would need an MRI before he has the fistual repaired. If he doesn't have a fistula we're back at square one with the diarrhea but he won't need surgery right away.

Dr. B also said that because he's having surgery in August to remove his trach she wants to wait a few months after that to do anything with the cyst, unless it starts causing problems. The cyst surgery is a big one that requires a lot of reconstruction, and so is the surgery he's having in August so she doens't want him to have two big surgery's so close together. She wants him to recover completley from the surgery in August for a few months before she does anything else. She, and we agree, feels that the August surgery is the more important surgery - decanulation!

So we won't know what's going on until we get results from the Upper GI test today. Once we know what that study showed we will know, surgically, what needs to be done. For now we wait, again.