Well, still trying to figure out what's going on with the fevers and pain. (He hasn't had fevers for awhile, and pain isn't as severe). Brent's blood tests were not good this week. Changed one of the IV antibiotics today from Levoquin to Avelox, scheduled for a special kind of MRI next Thursday to see if the CT scans are missing something, and just for the heck of it, they are letting Brent eat again. :) So, no answers, but NPO drives him nuts so being able to eat something really helps.
That's all for now . . .
Lisa

Well, back to NPO (nothing by mouth), increase prednisone again, high fevers and lots of pain. Fun times.

Brent's blood levels are down today. That is so good! Not into the good ranges, but definitely heading in the right direction. Woo-hoo! Could we really be lucky(blessed) enough to have the suture be the real cause of all of this pain for the past few months? Here's hoping.

YES!

The procedure today was a success! The Dr. was able to get the suture out by using a scope. It was very large and gnarly, and it took him an hour to get it out, but, he DID get it out. Now we just have to wait and see if the inflammation goes down. We are so thankful that he was able to reach it. Thank you for your prayers and well wishes. Now it is a waiting game to hopefully watch the numbers come back down, and the pain to subside. He's sore and tired, but hopeful.
~lisa

Really? REally???

Ok, so here goes a feeble attempt to describe the last couple of weeks.

My friend said it right when she said, "so with every answer comes more questions." Yep. Usually.

The past month, Brent has either been NPO, or on a liquid diet, trying to get the inflammation to go down. CT scan showed large pocket of inflammation, and adherance of the sm. intestine to the abdominal wall. No abscesses or fistulas for which we are grateful for. Unfortunately, nothing has seemed to work to control the inflammation. He has been on 4 IV antibiotics/day, large doses of steroids (prednisone & entocort), and the numbers kept going up. This weekend he had a lot of pain and fevers, and blood work on Monday was through the roof. On Monday, he had a needle aspiration of the area under CT, and also cultures of the Hickman line. So far, all of those have come back negative.

Today, we went to the hospital and Dr. Hemmert did a colonoscopy and found a suture deep inside. Ironically, this suture is in the exact area that has been causing problems for months. He had suspisions that this suture is what is causing the whole inflammation problem. It is a silk suture which does not dissolve and needs to be cut out. We then went to have another CT so they could verify that yes, the suture is in the exact area that the inflammation is in.
Dr. Hemmert was not sure what to do at this point, as he wasn't sure if they could go in and get the suture with a scope.

We just got a phone call telling us that he is scheduled on Friday so that Dr. Dickinson can try to get the suture through scoping him. If that doesn't work, we are pretty sure the only other option is surgical, which we want to aviod at any cost. Our surgeon is probably booking a flight to anywhere foreign right now, since he knows what is going on.

Sooooo, here is hoping beyond words that this procedure is successful and that it will alleviate his pain and the inflammation will go away. On the bright side, the colonoscopy showed no active Crohn's which was very unexpected. All along, we all assumed that the inflammation was active Crohn's.

We are thankful to Dr. Hemmert and his inspiration to do a colonoscopy today.

We are praying for yet another miracle that this is a quick fix for a large problem.