Intussusception?! What's that?

So this week was quite crazy for us. In my las post I was talking about the picture of the temple. Well this is the reason I am so thankful for the gospel in my life and that Chase and I were married in the temple and that the Lord is such a big part of my life and our little family's life. Kael had emergency surgery on Monday, Sept 13th for a condition called intussusception. It's something pretty rare and they don't really know what causes it, but our little monster got it. So here's the story......

We were over at my parents house on Sunday visiting and Kael was just fine and dandy. Being his normal monster self reeking mayhem in every possible moment. He started to get a little whinny. Which is totally normal for him when he starts to get tired. But it was only five so I figured it was because he hasn't been sleeping well the past couple weeks. He has been waking up in the middle of the night crying because he wants us to sleep with him. It was a long couple of weeks and just seems to keep getting longer. Anyways, my mom said he feels kind of clammy maybe he's not feeling good. So we decide to get him home and try to get him in bed early. We start getting our stuff together and he keeps whinning more and more and he starts complaining about his tummy. So we get home and right when we walk in the door he just brakes down and starts screaming and crying. So still not knowing what's wrong I figure lets give him a bath maybe that will calm him down. Well he's acting fine and like nothings wrong. I give him a bath and ready for bed. It was about seven by now. We sit down on his bed to read some books and about half way thru, "Are You My Mother?" he starts screaming, and he wants me to hold him then he screams more, and I put him down and he screams grabbing his tummy. So I run him into the other room where Chase is, saying something is wrong we need to take him in. Then all of a sudden he stops. Kael acts like nothing happened and he is fine. So we figure maybe he swallowed something and its trying to make its way out. So we call his sister who is an ER nurse to see what she suggested. While waiting to hear back from her, he has another episode. So I say panic and say we need to go in no matter what, something was seriously wrong and I could just feel it. So we head into the ER. We get into a room pretty quick and Kael is acting normal. Then right when the doctor walks in he starts having another episode. We tell the doctor that he has been doing this since about five and it seems to have a pattern of happening every 20 to 30 mins. She said it looks like he could have something called 'intussusception.' Huh? Well she described it like this... it's a condition where the intestines slide inside themselves like a telescope and contracts, which is where the pain is coming from. So she tells us that they are going to do an x-ray and then they would recommend going to the Children's hospital. So we get the x-ray done and then we get the paperwork and head over to the Children's ER. We made a pit stop at Chase's parents house so that Chase and his dad could give him a blessing. Once we got to the ER they got us into a room pretty quick to meet with the doctor. He came in and said the best way to figure out what exactly is going on was to do a procedure called a 'barium enema'. It's where they push fluid thru your intestines and watch it on a screen to see if there is a block or what is going on. Poor Kael was so sick of people violating him. He had to get a catheter in so they could take a urine sample, they took his blood, they kept taking his temp in his bum. Poor baby. And now they wanted to stick a tube up his bum and push fluid thru his intestines. The doctor explained that if he did actually have intussusception the barium enema could possibly fix it. Since I'm still pregnant I could go with them when they did the procedure. So I waited for an hour before Chase called me on his cell to let me know what happened. He said that Kael did have intussusception and the barium enema didn't fix the problem so now he has to have emergency surgery. Of course I freak, and start crying. The nurse comes and gets me to take me up to surgery so I can see Kael before they take him. The surgeon was really cool. He came in and explained what they were going to do. He said that they were going to make a small cut and pull out his intestines and see if they could fix the kink and if there were no tears or damage to the intestines then they tuck them back in and his recovery will be faster. If there was damage then he would have to cut out the yucky part, put it back together and his recovery would be longer. He also said that they were going to take out his appendix because the cut would be in the same spot. If he had any problems in the future with his appendix then doctors would think it couldn't be his appendix because it looks like they took it out already. So to avoid any future confusion or future surgeries they take it out. A few minutes later they take Kael away to surgery and the dreaded wait begins. They said it would take a couple hours for them to complete everything. My mom came down to wait with us and bring us some food, it was 2 a.m. by the time he left for surgery. About 1 1/2 hours later the surgeon came and told us everything went great. He was able to fix the problem with out having to cut any of the intestines out and his appendix came out with no problems. He said that the chances of him having intussusception again was about 1%. So hopefully he will never have to go thru this again. They finally get us settled into a room about 5 a.m. and my mom heads home. Chase and I are so revved up that we can't fall asleep. We were so relived that everything was okay now. We finally settle down and got some sleep. Kael had a few visitors that day and they brought him some fun toys. His grandmas and grandpas made sure he had plenty of fun stuff to keep him entertained. Luckily he recovered fast and by Tuesday afternoon we were being released. He is still a little tender, and caught some sort of cold bug, but other than that he is back to being a monster. He is eating fine, drinking fine, and going to the bathroom fine. He had a check up with his pediatrician and He freaked when he touched him, so I think it might be a while before he likes doctors or nurses. ha, ha. Poor baby. So thats basically the scoop. We have been just trying to take it easy and relax while his owie heals up.

Kael just after surgery. Us trying to get him to wake up was quite funny. He was so tired and did a really good job of ignoring us.

Right after he woke up, he went right back to sleep.

Monday this is all we did. Sleep. And watched some movies in between naps.

This was Kael 24hrs after the surgery. He was so ready to get down and play, even though he was still a little sore.

Showing us his owie.

Watching dad load the car so we could go home. He was jumping up and down, he was so thrilled he could see so many cars and trucks.

His tiny owie.

Relaxing at home watching plenty of movies.

This is from the last time we went to the lake. Kael went surfing with papa. You can tell by his face he wasn't too thrilled about it. But he still love going on the boat. Maybe when he gets older he will like it more.

Kael monster just being silly while waiting in line at the store. I love this little guy. My life would be incomplete without him.