Eureka, they found it!!

Family and friends,

Sorry I didn't write yesterday but it was a long day. Bob's Aunt April, Uncle Tom and I sat with most of his doctors yesterday and decided that Bob was stable enough to have exploratory surgery to try to find where the bleed in the small intestine was coming from. They did an enteroscopy this time where they fed a tube down his throat past his stomach and into his small intestine. The scope doesn't go the whole 30 feet of the small intestine so the surgeon had to make an incision above Bob's belly button, pull out his intestines and manually feed them through the scope for the GI doc. The doc says that the small intestine is like a sausage casing and there's no problem feeding through the tube. Anyway, they were worried that if Bob wasn't actively bleeding that they might now find anything. Boy were they wrong. Normally ulcers are found on the inside of the intestine. Bob's however was so big that it ate through the inside and you could see it visibly on the outside. The doctors were relieved that they found it when they did because they said that it could have torn open any day and Bob would have been in real trouble. The doc said that this was pretty rare having the ulcer go all the way through so he took a pic on his camera phone and sent it to me. They cut out 6-9 inches of his intestine in the affected area and reattached it with sewing and staples. They said the surgery went well. This was yesterday at 7pm.

Bob is back in his room recovering. He is still on a breathing machine and is not concious yet. As of this morning when I called the nurse they said that during the night Bob had some more bloody stools, but that had expected it as residual from what was left in the intestine. The other thing is that during the night Bob's red cell count dropped from 9.3 to 7.9 but the nurse thinks that's from post op oozing of the repair site. They are giving him more blood right now as a precaution. I am still worried but trying to be positive. I'm heading off to the hospital in a few minutes so that I can meet with the surgeon.

Thanks to everyone for keeping Bob in your thoughts and prayers.

Love and thanks,
Michele