Shiny New Button, the sequel

Post date: Aug 25, 2009 9:49:28 PM

Yes, there is a sequel.

In Episode 1 of the G-button series, Connor had broken the handy dandy Microvasive G-button he had been fitted with when the surgeon did his magic in December with his button, fundoplication and liver biopsy. (A prequel we'll revisit in a future posting assuming I can keep up with the "Flashback" series. Whew, it's hard authoring multiple series like this. Never mind that I've hardly been able to keep up with one thread. Hmmm...)

Where we left off previously was right after Mr. Surgeon had put in a brand new button - a Mic-key brand instead so we could see if we liked it better than the Microvasive. Here, the saga continues...

A couple of weeks after Connor was switched to a Mic-key G-button, his abdomen was still not healing fully. The Mic-key has a hard plastic end that sticks up about a centimeter above his belly and, with all his crawling and sliding around, was getting agitated a lot. This was causing some gross oozing (we won't get into gory details) and hurt him whenever he accidentally banged his button or was getting hooked up to a feeding session.

You know that feeling you get as a parent when your kid starts crying - but not just that normal, loud, you're-pissing-me-off-and-maybe-causing-some-discomfort crying? Yup, this is the bad one when you know they are really hurting. Connor has this silent cry where his face gets all scrunched up and he opens his mouth wide to cry, but no sound comes out. Yeah. That one. The one that causes big Guilt, with a capital G. Well, he did that a few times. Other times he would just startle and cry and squirm. Read: guilt, but not necessarily in caps.

We kept this up for a few weeks, but...the new G-button was obviously not working out for us.

So we switched back to the old version - the Microvasive. It sits practically flush with the belly and is made of a soft plastic. It's more inconvenient in some ways, but it is much more comfortable for Connor.

This time, we saw the surgery center's PA. He's a hoot. We like both him and the surgeon. But then we like most of Connor's docs. There's just one or two we could stand to do without and usually manage to.

Well, Mr. PA took out the Mic-key by deflating the balloon that was holding it in on Connor and slid it out. No cork "pop" this time. Then he took the new Microvasive and super-extended the button to flatten out the mushroom-like end and stuck it in Connor. It still had to be pushed in pretty far, so Connor cried a little bit. "Feels like someone jabbed him with their finger," says Mr. PA. He assured us that this is what the older kids say. (Just like pulling it out feels like a stubbed toe.) Okay.

It's just been over a week and things are starting to heal up great. He has a lot of granulation (where the tissue gets irritated and pushes up to form a collar around his G-button) that we'll get the GI doctor to look at this Friday when we see her. However, the area no longer looks red and irritated.

Hurray. Hopefully this one will stick around for a while and he'll heal up fine. It's looking good so far.

:-)