Sea Creatures

Sea creatures out at Torii Station, Okinawa.

Japanese Style Driving

A little taste of driving in Japan for those of you who have never been here. Taken while down in Okinawa.

Post-Op Report

I'm sorry this has taken so long.  Things have been pretty crazy since the surgery.  Because we had to extend our stay in Oki, we had to extend our hotel room, but weren't able to stay in the same room the rest of the time.  So the morning after Ben's surgery I had to go back and move all our stuff over to the next room.  Then we had issues with the internet in the new room, and for some reason I couldn't get it on my computer so we were just using Ben's.  But anyway, here's the post-op report:

Like I said in the last post, they ended up keeping Ben overnight just for observation.  Not a huge deal.  It was just because of the location of the thing they wanted to make sure they hadn't damaged the bowel or anything.  We spent the day at the hospital, and when the dr came back that evening he gave us the ok to head back to the hotel.  He was still hurting, but could already kind of tell it was not the same pain as before, so that was a good sign.  We got all the discharge stuff taken care of and headed back to the hotel. 

That was his belly Wednesday night after leaving the hospital.  It really wasn't as bad as it looked.  We were able to take the coverings off the next morning and the steri-strips eventually fell off on their own.  Needless to say we didn't do much the next few days.  It was Saturday evening before he left the room again, and that was just down to the car to go with me to get dinner from the drive-thru at Popeye's.  Sunday he did a little more.  We went and walked around the PX and the bazaar a little bit.  Wore him out pretty good, but he was getting bored in the hotel room.  Monday afternoon we went back for his post-op appointment with the dr.  Everything looked great.  He's still sore from the surgery but it is definitely not the same pain as before.  So the doctor gave us the ok to head home.  He said if anything was going to happen it would have happened by then, seeing how it was a week since his surgery.  So he gave us some more percocet for the trip and we were able to leave.  Granted it took us a while to get back, but that will be another post. 

This is one of the surgery pictures.  It's not the best copy (I'll try to get them scanned and post them that way), but that is what has caused my husband so much pain for the past year.  This epiploic appendagitis.  Basically everyone has hundreds of these little fatty nodule type things around the colon area.  And what happened was for some reason or another the blood supply gets cut off and it's not able to drain the blood that goes in.  So it gets all irritated and inflamed and whatnot, and it's really painful.  And because this thing is so angry it starts messing with every thing else around it.  Most of the time it can just be taken care of with anti-inflammatories.  But we had been doing that and it just really wasn't working.  That's when they go in and cut them out.  The dr sent it to pathology and it came back benign (which we figured it would) so there's nothing to worry about there.  I asked if it was possible for this to happen again, and he said it is.  It's extremely rare for it to happen in the first place, but it's possible.  But if it does happen again, we'll know what to look for.

Ben is doing a somewhat better now that we're home.  Back on our couch where he can recline, our bed that isn't like sleeping on a rock slab, and just being home in general.

I took this pic of his belly tonight.  He's healing up nicely.  He'll have a good scar on his right side and his belly button (but he already had one there), but the one on his left side looks great.  He's had the past couple days off and will go back to work Monday.  We stopped in his office Wednesday for a little bit and while everyone has happy to see him, they all kept saying how he should be home resting.  So we'll see how next week goes. 

Thank you again for all the prayers, thoughts, notes, etc.  They are much appreciated.  We are so happy and relieved to finally have an answer for this.  It's been a long time waiting.  We are so impressed with the doctors down in Okinawa who were finally able to get it figured out and fixed.  Now it's just the waiting game until he's feeling fully better and back to his old self.  Hopefully it's not much longer.  :)

Surgery

Sorry, no fun title for this one.  This is just a quick note before I go to bed.  Ben's surgery went well.  It took just under 2 hours.  I talked to the dr afterwards and again tonight.  He showed me the pics and what exactly he did.  Everything looked pretty much normal, other than this epiplocy thing and his spleen is kinda enlarged (we don't know why).  But he removed the epiplocy, but because of the location of it, which was litteraly right next to the bowl, he decided to admit him for the night just for observation.  He's doing alright.  Hurting, but that's to be expected.  It's still kinda early to tell if this is going to fix everything.  Hopefully it does.  The thing was right where the pain has been, so we're crossing our fingers.  We have our post-op appt next week, after the biopsy results get back from path.  The dr said it's benign, but just to make sure.  But that's where we are right now.  I'm sorry if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  It's after midnight, I'm tired, my emotions have been on the fritz all day, and I really just need a hug.  So I'm gonna go to bed now and hopefully feel better in the morning.  I'll keep you guys updated as he improves and if we find out anything new.  Thanks for all the prayers and thoughs.  They are appreciated.  :)

One More Thing

I forgot to mention we got the biopsy results back... No infection.  So the gastritis was probably just some irritation from something he ate or all the pills he's been on (even though he hadn't taken them for about 2 weeks prior).  So nothing to worry about there.  :)

An Answer?

I think we may have found the source of Ben's pain...
We met with the General Surgeon this morning.  After talking, examing, and talking some more he said he would do an exploratory surgery.  He didn't think he would find anything, but if that's what we really wanted he would do it.  The only thing was he wanted to have a CT Scan done first.  We agreed, he called radiology and got it set up to have it done later that afternoon.  Radiology brought up the contrast dye and we sat in the waiting room while Ben drank the nasty stuff.  Couple hours later we head down to have the scan done.  They did the IV dye, and took the CT.  Guess what, they found something!  At that point we didn't know what it was, but there was definitly something there.  We go get some lunch and head back up to talk to the surgeon again.  After waiting a while in the waiting room (I think that's where we spent most of the day), we head back to his office and look at the Scan results.  He goes through them, and as we get towards the end, we see something that's not supposed to be there.  It's called Epiploic Appendagitis.  Basically what it is, is a fatty tumor that causes all his innards to get tangled up and pushed around and therefore can be pretty painful.  I don't think it's cancerous, but I'm sure they'll send it to the lab and have it checked out when they remove it tomorrow.  Yup, he's having surgery tomorrow.  He would have done it today, but we had just finished lunch right before going up so they couldn't.  They were able to fit him in tomorrow though.  It will just be a laproscopic procedure, real quick.  Should only take a half hour, an hour at most.  But he's going to go in, remove this thing, look around and make sure nothing else is going on that shouldn't be, and we should be good to go.  Just a quick little out patient procedure.  Hopefully this fixes everything too.  It's been almost a year and we're just finally now getting answers.  It's kinda pathetic and frustrating really.  This is the fourth CT Scan he's had done, and we're just now finding it?!?!  It's nice to have finally seen a doctor who actually found something.  I mean it's somewhat understandable that we're just now getting an answer, because it's not a very common thing.  As we were doing the pre-op paperwork, all the nurses were like "it's what?" and "how do you spell that?"  So it's not dealt with very often, as least not here.  So Epiploic Appendagitis.  The cause of so much misery and pain.  Hopefully this cures it!

What We Know So Far

 Here's a quick summary of our trip to Okinawa so far.  I flew down on my birthday on the Space-A flight because we were told I was not needed down here.  I'll get to that in a minute though.  Ben flew down on the 28th.  We met with the dr on the 29th and just kinda talked about what's been working, what hasn't, and what procedures he was going to have done.  On the 31st, we went in for him to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy done.  Everything went fine with the colonoscopy.  The dr did find some inflamation and swelling in the lower part of the small intestine, but everything in the colon looked fine.  He did some biopsies of the small intestine and we're still waiting on those to come back.  They went to do the endoscopy and that didn't go so well.  They didn't numb his throat very well (if at all), and his body didn't like that so much.  His heart rate shot up over 200, so they didn't finish.  We rescheduled the endoscopy to have it done in the OR at a later time.  We had a few days between procedures, so we went to the beach a couple times (pics and videos to come), but mostly just spent a lot of time in the hotel room.  Between him not feeling well and the rain, we didn't get out much.  Which is kind of what I expected anyway, so it hasn't been too bad.  Easter was quiet.  We had Dunkin Donuts and strawberry milk for breakfast, and went to Chili's for dinner.  I'll make a nice late Easter dinner when we get back, since there's only so much I can do in a microwave.  Anyway, Tuesday the 6th we went in and had his endoscopy done, this time in the OR where they could give him the good drugs.  And that is what they did.  He was out of it the whole procedure, which is a good thing.  I didn't get a chance to talk to the dr after this one, and they kept him in the OR recovery room before bringing him back to the APU recovery.  I'll admit, I was freaking out a little bit because I knew the procedure didn't take an hour and a half.  And it didn't.  Just took him a while to wake up before they moved him.  We did get to look at the pictures and report from the dr before we left, and he wrote that he had found Gastritis (inflamation) in the stomach.  He took biopsies of those, and it will take about a week to get back the results.  Needless to say, we didn't do much the rest of the day yesterday.  So today we had our follow up appointment with the dr.  We went over the findings of the procedure yesterday and he thinks it's an infection caused by a parasite or something like that.  Don't ask me what it's called because it was long, hard to pronounce, and one I hadn't heard of before.  We won't know for sure until we get the biopsy results back though.  We also talked about what our other options are and where we go from here.  We decided we're going to talk to a general surgeon about doing an exploratory surgery.  The next available appointment isn't until Monday, so our stay here in Okinawa has been extended for another week.  Not that that is a bad thing.  It's kinda been a nice little vacation, for me anyway.  While at the dr today, we also got him to sign the form saying it was required I be here as a non medical attendant.  We were told no, I wasn't needed, so the military would not pay for a plane ticket or anything for me.  Hence why I came down early.  Well guess what, I was needed.  He wasn't allowed to drive after his procedures and there is no way the hospital would release him to a taxi like the case manager said they would.  DUH!  So we got the signed form from the dr saying I was needed, and the people in Ben's office and command are involved too.  His boss told the General what happened and he wasn't too happy.  It's always a good feeling knowing the Post Commander is on your side.  So for all of those who were wondering if his new job would be beneficial in getting us some help, yes it has.  :) 
So that's where we are right now.  I'll try to post some more in the next day or so, although the rain is supposed to let up so I may head to the beach.  You'll get some pics and videos soon though.  :)