Yesterday Dahlias belly was a little swollen and pretty hard. They thought it might be due to so much medication or maybe because they had tried feeding her but she wasn't digesting it yet because she was not ready. They had a few ideas but were not sure and just decided on, "let wait and see".
Yesterday evening she started spitting up blood. Old brown blood, a lot. I've always feared that one day she would start spitting up blood out of nowhere. You can only imagine my horror when it was actually happening. And it wasn't a little, it was A LOT. This went on for a while before they decided to have an X-ray done of her chest and abdomen.
The look on the surgeons face that came in said it all. He went right to her and felt her tummy and said that the X-ray was very concerning. They said she had a lot of air in her abdomen. Air in the intestines and stomach is OK, but air in the abdomen is no good. He said this could be a sign of a hole in her intestines. If there is a hole, then stuff could leak out and cause some major damage. He then said she needed to have surgery ASAP.
So we talked to a couple of the surgeons, they told us all sorts of things that it could be and around midnight we took her down to the OR. They started the surgery around 12:30am and finished 2 hours later.
They said they found a hole in the back of her stomach about the size of a quarter. They said it was an ulcer like hole. They said that it had absolutely nothing to do with her recent surgery and that it was pure coincidence that it happened around the same time. He said on one hand it was good that it happened while she was hospitalized so that they were able to fix it right away but it was also bad that it was so close to her recent surgery. Now we have to worry about her patch on her diaphragm getting infected because they opened her again. They did start antibiotics to hopefully prevent any infection.
She is doing good this morning. The first thing she said to me was, "aqua nam nam", water & food. The plan today is to keep her comfortable and calm. Her numbers are good and we'll keep praying for her to keep getting better. No more surprises!
The amount of support we have gotten is absolutely incredible. Larissa & David showed up right away, as did Joel & Heidi. Abels friends and co-workers also showed up. And the number of texts, phone calls and I love yous from my sisters and everyone else sure made us feel loved.
Thank you everyone.
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