1 month after surgery (give or take)

Well, I haven't updated my blog in a while, so I thought i'd include a little info on what's been taking place since JD's surgery. We were released home from the hospital on Dec. 28th after being in the hospital about 5 days. JD seemed to be healing really well according to the doctor. JD was blessed with finding a wonderful surgeon (Dr. Voloyiannis who practices out of Southeast Memorial Hermann). The surgery was about 9 hours long and was completed entirely lapriscopically. It was a long procedure but would ensure a quicker recovery.

Once we got home, JD had a lot of resting to do. I'm so thankful for my mom, JD's mom, and his grandmother who all made themselves available to us to help take care of him while he was healing. This allowed me to be able to return to work and not have to miss out on very much time. He stuck to a softer food diet...lots of scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, and some soups.

JD had a hard time at first dealing with the side effects of new ostomy bag. Started to cause skin irritation and we also experienced retraction of the stoma to some degree. The Dr. was concerned that this could require an unexpected additional procedure if it continued to withdraw into the abdominal wall, so they switched the type of bag he was given to use. This would help to keep the stoma outside of that wall.

So far the bag has worked wonderfully and JD's been healing nicely. Recently in the last week or so, he's been able to start getting out of the house on his own to run light errands so he can get his body used to moving around and driving again.

Today, Tuesday (1/26/2010) is his first day back at work since his surgery. He still has to contend with the bag for now until the 2nd procedure is scheduled. We are looking at possibly mid to end of February. JD's doctor appt will be this coming monday, so we will find out more about when his 2nd procedure would be scheduled. The upside of the 2nd surgery is, instead of 9 hours we are looking at 2 hours for completion and much quicker healing time.

I will update my blog once we find out more about JD's 2nd procedure here in the near future.