[Here’s the latest update. This one was written by Kat.]

From Kat:

As most of you know, our son Theodore Kenton Lehmann arrived 5 weeks ahead of schedule (August 2). As you may also know, Theo’s dance card has been filled, mostly with getting through lots of preemie stuff. Photos of the beautiful little bugger can be found (as well as almost daily updates) on Chris’s blog — http://www.practicaltheory.org/

Theo has been filled with interesting anamolies, most notably his twelve toes, strange kidneys and other exciting things. However, until today, every weird thing has turned out to be not a big deal. Unfortunately, we’ve discovered that he has something called Hirschsprung’s Disease. Basically, it means the nerve endings in some of his colon, aren’t there. He is being scheduled for surgery next Thursday or Friday, where they hope to determine how extensive this is, and then fix it. Fixes range from cutting out a section of his colon, to rebuilding his entire colon and doing a second surgery in a few months. [Chris’ note — needing to rebuild the whole colon is much more rare, and we are very hopeful that we won’t have to do that.]

On a good note, he’s at CHOP, one of the best children’s hospitals in the country, where they do these surgeries constantly. If all goes well, he’ll be out of the hospital in about three weeks. I’ve been able to hold him for hours most days, and now that his jaundice has gone down, he’s getting damned curious about what’s going on around him.

We’re sad that life isn’t all that easy for Theo at the moment, but hopeful that it can only go up from here. Please keep us in your thoughts.

Luv,
Kat

[Chris again…

For those folks who feel the need to google all medical stuff, the best site I’ve found is this one:
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/hirschsprungs_ez/index.htm

Thanks for everyone’s supportive emails. My apologies if I haven’t gotten back to you personally, but please know that we’ve both read the notes, and they do mean the world to us. And I just want to second all of Kat’s thoughts, but especially that Theo is, despite all this medical craziness, a wonderful little guy with a lovely disposition. He’s a real sweetheart who loves to be held for hours, and the folks at CHOP are smitten, as, of course, are we. We are hopeful that this is the mild version of Hirschsprung’s and that we’ll get him home and healthy soon.

— Chris ]