It never seems to end, our relationship with the local Hospitals. This year has been particularly fun!
First, Joe had his 3rd Operation on the 31st July; a routine Tonsilectomy (he has previously had his adenoids removed and grommits in, and a hernia operation). We have still yet to fully understand what happened, but on the 5th August he was admitted back to hospital with severe Haemorrhaging. He had an emergency operation and spent several days in hospital after that. He had only been home two nights when he woke up at midnight on the 11th in a pool of blood and was rushed to hosptial by ambulance for yet another operation. This time his Hb level was too low so he required 11/2 units of blood by transfusion.
We are seeing a haematologist in Frimley as, although his situation is extremely rare, they cannot find anything in his blood that would cause such a loss of blood (they wondered for a time if he had a bloood disorder like Von Willebrands). We have a letter from Prof Smith to state that the most likely causes were lack of *silk* (i.e. stitches) and he believes it was a error in surgery that caused the bleed. We are awaiting a date for a meeting with the Clinical Director of Surgery in Portsmouth hosp, and the surgeon who operated on Joe, and want to know that lessons can be learnt from this traumatic series of events. Poor Joe coped very well, but it was deeply upsetting for us to see Joe loosing so much blood. It was pouring out of him at an alarming rate and the memory of that will certainly stay with me forever, especially when he was in the IC department of A and E at Frimley at 3am. Joe on the other hand was more interested in the lego he was going to get for all the extra operations he was having. Smart boy!
Mollie, just to keep things interesting, has been bleeding from the other end!! On the 23rd July she had a colonoscopy under General Anaesthetic to find out what was causing it, and they did some biopsies. We go back to find out more on the 22nd Sept, but so far all we know is that they found Grade II - III LHN (Lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia) in the Ileum (basically severe bobbles in her upper intestine). It has been hard waiting for the results of the Biopsy and we can't wait to find out what has caused both the bleeing and the LNH.
