Jack Jensen's Blog: 2 year surgery follow up

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

2 year surgery follow up

Jack and I made the trek to Johns Hopkins today for his 2 year follow up appt with his surgeon. We went to the main hospital first and got some chest xrays then went over to the Rubenstein building for his clinic appt. His xrays were GREAT!! When he had his last series of xrays at 18 months we weren't sure if he had a possible reherniation but this time we got clear films and you could see the diaphragm across both sides. Since the patch doesn't grow, we can assume that muscle has filled in those areas. His surgeon also told us that time is on our side - the longer Jack goes without reherniating, the better our chances that he won't reherniate again. His surgeon was really pleased with how he's doing and even gave him a lollipop at the end of our visit. We don't have to go back for 1 YEAR!!

We also got Jack's Halloween costume today. You'll have to wait 'til Halloween to see the pictures but it's AWESOME!

Vic

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Woo-Hoo!
You show them Super-Jack!; September 16, 2009 at 11:49 PM

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Jack's Diagnosis and Recovery

At our 19 week ultrasound Jack was diagnosed with CDH. One week later James and I went to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. for more extensive analysis. We had a fetal MRI and saw that his hernia was on the left side (the most common) and at that time his liver was 'up' or in his chest. His heart was pushed to the right in his chest and he had a normal sized right lung and a very small left lung (about 1/5 the normal size). Overall his CDH was classified as severe with a Lung to Head (LHR) ratio of 0.8. His echocardiogram showed that his heart was beating strong and there was no underlying congenital heart defect. His amnio was also normal. The prognosis was 20-50% chance of survival at birth. The struggle we faced with this diagnosis was that there is little correlation between prenatal diagnostic test results and outcome at birth. Some babies with mild defects do poorly and some with severe defects pull through and do very well. All we could do was try to be optimistic and hope and pray that Jack would be a strong baby and fight hard. On August 20, 2007 John Verner Jensen "Jack" was born by C-section at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces and was 20 inches long. Within hours of birth he was placed on ECMO (heart-lung bypass). He had a 10 day run on ECMO and went to his hernia repair surgery on this machine. He was missing 90% of his left diaphragm, had his entire stomach, spleen, and parts of his small and large intestines and liver in his chest and he required a gortex patch. Jack came out of surgery off ECMO but with the cannulas still in place until later that night. He had a really hard night after surgery and we nearly lost him. We were later told his blood gases should have been unsurvivable and that it was pure will and not medicine that saved him. After 81 days in hospital we brought Jack home breathing room air and needing only an NG (naso-gastric) feeding tube. After 27 days home he reherniated and we had to go back for emergency surgery at Johns Hopkins. His awesome surgeons literally patched him back up and after another 16 days in hospital he returned home on Dec 21, 2007 - just in time for his first Christmas. Since then Jack has tackled his eating issues and is NG-tube free! He does not require any medication. We are extremely grateful for his incredible medical team and all his friends and family for their support, kind words, thoughts and prayers.

Jack's CarePage chronicles his day-to-day journey from diagnosis to approximately 6 months old (before we started blogging). See the link below.