11 hours later...

So much can change over the course of 11 hours. This morning we thought we were going to take a wait and see approach and were hopeful that the obstruction would resolve on it's own. Unfortunately, Cody's body had a different plan and decided enough was enough. Cody began experiencing increased abdominal pain this afternoon and the decision was made to operate.

Cody went into surgery about 2:45 and 2 hours later we finally discovered the extent of the obstruction. We were given actual pictures of Cody's bowels and the aftermath of the removal of the scar tissue. I am not able to scan the pictures from our laptop (and some of you may not want to see them), but basically just imagine your bowel having a rubber band around it. The surgeon described it as Cody's small intestine was having a heart attack. The tissue was slowly being closed off from the blood supply. The constriction was causing all of the stool and gas in his bowels to backup and making the intestines dilate (get bigger). This was causing the intense abdominal pain. The surgeon was able to do the surgery via laparoscopy(4 small incisions).

Cody is doing well right now. He's been asleep since he got to the floor (about 5:30). He has a PCA (patient controlled anesthesia) to control his pain. I call it his magic button. I was so happy to see it on his IV pole when he got to the room. He still has his tubes. We were told to expect to be here for a week. This isn't something that he will easily recover from. It's going to be a long haul. But, we've made it this far and hopefully the worst is behind us and Cody will return to being an active, healthy teenager.

Thank you all for the calls, emails, and offers to help where needed. Over the next few days, I may be calling to claim those offers to help. I'll post updates through the blog as I have more information. Hopefully I'll be able to post something in the morning and evening of each day.

Prayers are still appreciated as we still have a long recovery ahead of us.

~jen