A Difficult Day

Yesterday Broc had an angiogram to see if they could figure out why his right leg has stopped growing again. Thank you to everyone who came and stayed with Broc and I. It was wonderful to have the support esp when we were given the bad news and I had to make some very important phone calls. Having people to talk to and entertain Broc for the 6 hours that he had to lay perfectly still was wonderful. We truly have a wonderful,loving brotherhood.

Well onto the bad news. There is a reason why Brocs leg has stopped growing,having pain with activity etc. He has 2 issues going on with his leg.

This picture shows how wonderful his new grafted artery is growing. The new artery is on the left of the picture. Its almost as big if not bigger than the artery on the right side of the picture.

This picture shows the one reason. Where the end of his graft meets his artery its has caused lots of scar tissue and that has caused a narrowing or occlusion. This will be fixed. They will be putting in another patch here once they have cleared all the scar tissue to make the artery bigger.

This picture shows how wonderful our bodies are and the great network of collaterals that his body has made for the bottom half of his leg to still get blood supply. The problem is you can see the gap between the two veins.(it may be an artery I'm not sure). When they decided to do Brocs surgery in 2012 the Drs had the decision to graft and connect either the femoral or the iliac artery. They made the decision to connect his femoral artery as it was the most beneficial at the time and they said grafting and connecting 2 at the same time would be too much for his body to handle. Unfortunately Brocs body is not able to function properly without the iliac artery connected too. This would explain all the pain he is getting in the lower half of his leg with exercise. Somehow this artery/vein that was left before will now be grafted and connected too. Before when this surgery has been done this situation has never happened before.Other children have continued to grow and not have any problems. Brocs situation is very unique and his Drs are learning and trying to figure out the best solution for legs to continue growing at the same rate. They want to know that they have fixed everything they can to give him the most benefit. 

This surgery will not be as extensive as his previous vascular surgery, but it is still a major surgery. Dr Eliason knows that Broc writes his own book and is different than any typical patient. Typically a person would stay 1 night in ICU and 3-4 days on the regular floor. Broc will however stay 1-2 nights in ICU and 5-6 days on the regular floor. That is baring no complications such as gut shutdown,fevers or any other curve ball Broc decides to throw our way.

As soon as I heard that he needed vascular surgery in Jan, we moved his GI surgery up.That will now be on December 4. He will be 3-4 days in the hospital with 1-2 weeks recovery. Then he will have about 2 weeks until his vascular surgery which will have 8 weeks recovery. With that being said Broc will be leaving school the first week in Dec and returning sometime in March. We are not sure what we are going to do about schooling for him. Mark and I will have a meeting with the school to determine the best solution for him.

The biggest help we need is help with taking care of Lil Mark. He does not handle change very well and gets extreme anxiety whenever his brother is ill esp having a surgery. He is so brave with everything that our family has been through.

Thank you to everyone for all your love,support and prayers.