Josh is having surgery today. He is having an endoscopy done as well as a thoracentesis.
Upper endoscopy enables the physician to look inside the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum (first part of the small intestine). The procedure might be used to discover the reason for swallowing difficulties, nausea, vomiting, reflux, bleeding, indigestion, abdominal pain, or chest pain. Upper endoscopy is also called EGD, which stands for esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Josh has been having some stomach pain along with more nausea, thats what he is having it done. For the procedure he will swallow a thin, flexible, lighted tube called an endoscope. The endoscope transmits an image of the inside of the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum, so the doctor can see the lining of these organs.
A thoracentesis is to remove fluid from his left lung. They will insert a hollow needle catheter into his chest cavity and drain all the fluid off of his lung. They are expecting to take at least a quart of fluid off. They brought all the needed supplies to the room last night, which included 3 glass jars to collect the fluid in. Each jar would hold about 1000 mL of fluid.
He will be put to sleep for both of these operations. I will update more when I know more.
Someone had asked me where to go to donate blood…anywhere that the Red Cross is doing a blood drive.
Thanks for all the support everyone has given us..I don’t know where we would be without it!
This post was posted on Thursday August 28, 2008 at 5:46AM
