Pediatric Surgeon Consult

We met with Dr. Lam this morning, and our prayers have been answered!  He was very excited to see Ryan because I reminded him that he placed the penrose drain in his abdomen when he was only 8 days old and only about 1 pound, and he remembered!  He even asked if I was the one who was friends with Melisa (Melisa, if you're reading this...did you happen to talk to him yesterday?  I was so impressed he remembered that!).  He was really impressed with how big Ryan is now, and he stayed and talked with us an extra long time and shared some really sad and inspiring preemie stories that reminded us just how lucky we are to have our little guy with us today.  We are so blessed that now Ryan is one of his inspiring stories that he can share with other preemie parents. 

So, here's the best news.  Dr. Lam doesn't want to operate on the abscess!  He said it's not "ripe" enough yet. :)  Basically, it's still small enough and it's so hard and deep that we are just going to continue giving the antibiotic and hope that it "ripens" and eventually comes to the surface and drains on its own.  We are going to give him sitz baths every time he has a bowel movement to encourage it to move to the surface and pop.  I asked if we needed to worry about sepsis or anything like that and he said absolutely not.  Ryan's abscess is really small and he's on antibiotics, so he should be fine.  I also asked if he knew what might have caused this, and he said sometimes if kids get constipated and strain too hard they can cause a little tear in there and then it can get stool inside it and become infected.  A few weeks ago when Ryan started taking a bit more of his solids, his BM patterns changed and he was waiting 3-4 days to go.  It wasn't hard like constipation, but it was definitely spaced out more and he was straining a lot more when he finally did go.  We are going to continue adding pears and now prunes to his diet to help keep things more regular, and we'll just monitor the abscess and go back in a few weeks if it hasn't drained on it's own or gotten better.  It sounds like we caught Ryan's really early, so hopefully the antibiotics will help.

The doctor did warn us that once a baby develops this, there is a chance of recurrence in the same spot.  If that happens, then he might need a quick and easy 5 minute surgery to go in and remove the lining of the tear so that it will seal back up.  He drew a lovely picture and explained it much better than I ever could, but we'll just keep praying that this one heals up nicely and never comes back so I don't have to go into more detail.  Thank you all so much for your thoughts, prayers, and support.  This whole ordeal couldn't have turned out any better!  Well, I guess it would've been better if it never happened, lol, but you know what I mean. :)