Here’s the latest Theo update, and it’s pretty much very good news! Yesterday was his surgery. The doctors decided that, since he was going under general anesthesia anyway, they’d use this as a good time to remove Theo’s extra toes, so, as Theo’s Aunt Kara put it, Theo has lost his "twinkle-toes." We went into the surgery thinking that he’d probably have around 75% of his colon removed. The whole surgery lasted about five hours, and when it was all said and done, they found that the Hirschsprung’s Disease only affected between a quarter to a third of his colon — and that’s all they had to remove. (They also took his appendix out, which apparently is standard operating procedure for this surgery.) Because they only had to remove such a (relatively) small portion of his colon, we’re very confident that this will have no lasting impact on his life, other than a scar under his belly button which he’ll have to figure out a good story for later on.

Right now, he’s back on the ventilator as he recovers from the surgery, but we expect that will only be for another day or two at most. There are two concerns post-op. One is that babies tend to regress a bit after surgery, as their bodies aren’t exactly built for such a shock. Two is that, since this is a surgery dealing with the poop-area, there is a greater chance of infection, but again, given that he is at CHOP, we’re not overly concerned about either of these issues, we’re just more readying ourselves for the prospect that we’re not completely out of the woods yet.

We’re still hopeful that we could have Theo home sometime around Labor Day. I’ll post new pictures of him up on the web as soon as we have some non-ventilator pics. And in the meantime, you can see a few of the most recent pre-surgery pics.

As always, thank you all for your emails and calls and concern and thoughts. Knowing that we aren’t going through this alone has been a huge source of comfort and support for Kat and me during this time. With any luck, we’re in the home stretch, and we’ll have Theo home and excited for visitors soon!

Love,
Chris and Kat