The Medical History: Kade started not feeling well late Saturday night (06-06). He was unable to keep any food down and was very restless. On Sunday morning (06-07) Kade was taken into the ER to be looked at. Kade was treated for the flu and sent home.
Monday: After a lot of love and care and a few more worried calls to the ER, we made our way to see his doctor right away on Monday AM, he seemed to be getting worse and he was unable to keep more than 2oz of fluid down. The doctor suspected that it was Intussusception, the telescoping of the bowel. We went to St Elizabeth’s to get X-Rays and a Barium enema right away to get his small intestines back where they needed to be. Kade’s smaller intestines were being swallowed up by his bowel. This can occur in a small percent of children under 1 years of age, but very important to be treated as soon as possible. The first treatment was done under a X-ray machine confirmed that Kade had Intussusception. They were able to reduce the obstruction 90 percent of the way, but they were unable to complete the whole process in that manner. So Kade would need to undergo surgery to complete everything. Kade was taken into surgery about 2:30pm on Monday. The doctor removed the blockage and also took out his appendix. At around 5:30 he was back into Mommys arms and in his recovery room. We were so happy to see our little guy. He would open his eyes and look at us a few moments at a time over the evening, and make some noises as well. At one point he even tried to crawl. He was running a temp but everything seemed on track.
Tuesday: During the early morning hours on Tuesday Kade had taken a turn for the worse. His temp would not go down, his heart rate was over 200 and he was not responding to anything. The doctors had to place another IV into his tiny body to help get him more fluids. It was very touch and go. They made a call to move him to Omaha Children’s Hospital so that he could have better care and treatment. Allison and I were both with him on the way in the ambulance and he seemed to be stable until the last 5 minutes when he started having trouble breathing and he coded. They rushed him into the ER and after about an hour they were able to get him stable. They sent him right into surgery to try and determine what the cause of the problem might be. The surgeons opened him back up to relieve the tension he had built up inside his gut. His intestines were very sick and required the doctors to place him on a lot of medications to help fight the possible infection. They kept him asleep and had him hooked up to everything so they could allow his body to rest and fight off everything. At this point Kate was in critical condition in the ICU. The staff at Children’s were so wonderful and took extra special care of our Kade. They also gave him medication that kept him temporarily paralyzed so that he didn’t try to move and cause extra problems.
On Tuesday afternoon they did have to do another emergency procedure during surgery to help relieve more pressure and fluids that were starting to build up inside his gut. They left Kade’s belly open so they could drain out more fluid. The doctors said Kade was looking better but we had to have another 48-72 hours before we were out of the woods. We spent the next 9 weeks at Children’s. During that time Kade endured 16 more surgeries, specialists, infections, fevers, withdrawal from narcotics and eventually got his tummy closed up along with other additional hardware he had acquired. We came home the day before his 1st birthday in 2009. Kade has to relearn everything that he had accomplished in his short life so far. He quickly regained his strength to sit up on his own, the eventually moving around, crawling, etc. He also had to relearn how to eat. We were able to get his G-button removed in November. We finally had a boy that didn’t have additional equipment! He has not had any gut issues since and he did not lose any of his intestines. We were so blessed to have a happy ending, as we saw during our time at Children’s not all families do.
Fortunately after our stint at Children's in the summer of 2009 we have not had any major medical issues!!!! Kade is now a 1st grader and has joined boy scouts. His sister Hanna is in 5th grade, and is a volleyball and piano player.