Everyone, I posted about a month ago asking for suggestions on what to take with us to the hospital when my daughter had her surgery and some of those suggestions were priceless -thank you!
I just wanted to post an update to give some encouragement to those whose kids might have to have a resection at some point. My daughter was diagnosed with Crohn's in October 2015. She did a course of EEN for 12 weeks and it helped her pain and gave her immediate relief. She started on Remicade two months later and she's been doing great on it (it even healed an internal fistula!), but she was still having occasional issues with pain. It was determined that she had hardening and narrowing at the terminal ileum that could not be healed (long-term damage) and, after consulting two surgeons, we determined that it needed to come out. We were told that outcomes and recovery are better if surgery is done when you are "well", so my daughter chose to have surgery over spring break (she's 16).
She went into the hospital on April 11th and the surgery that was supposed to take 2-4 hours (laparoscopically) took less than an hour! She was released from the hospital on the 14th and was off pain meds (including Tylenol) three days after that. We were told that she'd be very tired and sleep a lot - she only napped at home twice post surgery. She was back to school part time exactly a week after surgery and she'll be back full time tomorrow!
She's not 100% yet, mind you, but she's 90%, which is much more than I could have imagined. Maybe my daughter's experience with resection was atypical, but I hope that someone facing similar circumstances will read this and take heart.
As always, thank you all for your amazing support! I know that our journey with Crohn's is not over, but hopefully my daughter can focus on regular teenager stuff for a while
I just wanted to post an update to give some encouragement to those whose kids might have to have a resection at some point. My daughter was diagnosed with Crohn's in October 2015. She did a course of EEN for 12 weeks and it helped her pain and gave her immediate relief. She started on Remicade two months later and she's been doing great on it (it even healed an internal fistula!), but she was still having occasional issues with pain. It was determined that she had hardening and narrowing at the terminal ileum that could not be healed (long-term damage) and, after consulting two surgeons, we determined that it needed to come out. We were told that outcomes and recovery are better if surgery is done when you are "well", so my daughter chose to have surgery over spring break (she's 16).
She went into the hospital on April 11th and the surgery that was supposed to take 2-4 hours (laparoscopically) took less than an hour! She was released from the hospital on the 14th and was off pain meds (including Tylenol) three days after that. We were told that she'd be very tired and sleep a lot - she only napped at home twice post surgery. She was back to school part time exactly a week after surgery and she'll be back full time tomorrow!
She's not 100% yet, mind you, but she's 90%, which is much more than I could have imagined. Maybe my daughter's experience with resection was atypical, but I hope that someone facing similar circumstances will read this and take heart.
As always, thank you all for your amazing support! I know that our journey with Crohn's is not over, but hopefully my daughter can focus on regular teenager stuff for a while
