My boy is back

That's my Nate...smiling through the 15 minute irrigation process - first one we did on our own tonight!
The biopsy results showed that Nate does have Hirschsprung's disease. We hardly flinched, because his doctor had already pretty much planned on that news. The plan: irrigate him 2x per day ourselves, and if all goes well, Dr. Howell will do the surgery April 28 or 29. The "yikes" part of the day was when the P.A. told us that Nate will need to be in the hospital 2 days before the surgery (to get all cleaned out) and then stay 5-7 days after the surgery. That sounds so long to us! After the surgery we will spend the next month or so dilating Nate so the surgery site won't close up. Hopefully he will be good to go (literally GO, as in fly away to CA) at the end of May. He will need follow up care in St. Louis. The radiologist saw that Nate's hips looked a bit underdeveloped for his age, so next week he needs to see an orthopedic surgeon to get that checked out. If you ask me, he looks like a perfectly healthy baby...not sure what the problem is with these doctors who think he has things to be fixed. :)
At the doctor's office, Dave learned how to irrigate. (Note: the doctor asked which of us wanted to learn...I pointed right to Dave who has the hand skills. I would be way too nervous with the doctor watching my every move. It was not easy stuff.) Nate didn't like it at the doctor's office. I felt terrible thinking about Nate having to have this done two times every day. It looks SO uncomfortable. I spared you the pictures (mostly for you, Dad) but in a nutshell, we have an 18 inch catheter that goes about 12 inches into Nate's colon. We have a monster-size surringe that injects truck-loads of saline solution and then pulls out everything in his colon...EVERYTHING. We repeat this process about 25 times before he is totally cleaned out. The set-up and clean up for this is quite a process as well.

We braced ourselves after dinner for our first try at the at-home-irrigating. We heard one little squawk out of Nate and that was it. It was great having the girls around to distract him. The pictures aren't the greatest - we had some huge smiles, but they showed too much anatomy so I opted for the more modest pix. He was squealing and as happy as could be. I think he loved having Ash, Sade, Mom and Dad all around him cheering him on. I was on cloud 9 seeing how "ok" Nate was with the process. It's amazing what can make a mom happy after a week like we've had. I'm proud of you Nate! This is a 2-man job, so we'll be doing it around 5 a.m. every morning before Dave leaves for school - should be fun! If you're up and in the area, feel free to stop in for some fun.

I had to throw this picture in. Doesn't he look happy and healthy to you?

P.S. We have been told that the 3 pediatric surgeons (who always work as a team in the OR) are the best in the business and have been doing this for 30 years. That was great to hear! We were told by the P.A. who has worked with them for the past 18 years that we couldn't be in better hands.