Justifying Another Surgery

Tomorrow we’ll bring Noah back to Duke to have a new feeding tube surgically placed in his stomach. It’s not a major surgery but it will require him to be monitored for 24 hours afterward. Maria and I didn’t want to put our son through another surgery. We were determined to just keep pushing the tube down his nose into his stomach every time he would pull it out or every few weeks, whichever came first, until he could eat/drink enough to maintain healthy growth. About a month ago, though, we decided that we needed to seriously consider taking whatever advice Noah’s pediatrician would give us about getting the tube surgically implanted in the stomach, the G-tube. She was on board with getting the G-tube and Maria and I were convinced that progress wasn’t coming quick enough.

We are really excited about the new tube now. We still don’t want Noah to have to go through another surgery, but we think he’s going to be much more comfortable with the G-tube. His NG-tube, the tube that enters the body through his nose, has to be taped to his face. The skin under the tape is irritated and can’t heal because it always has tape on it. The irritation causes him to rub the tape and pull at the tube, which in turn causes more irritation. So, it will be great to end this cycle and let his skin heal. It will also be great to see his beautiful face without the tube taped to it.

Another reason we want to get rid of the NG-tube is because we believe that it hinders the enjoyable sensation of eating. This was a big problem until a few weeks ago. As if the mention of another surgery has made him take eating seriously, the boy has been eating like a champ since we brought it up. Still he has medicines that taste awful that he will be on for a long time. We still feel that trying to give him his awful tasting medicines orally would cause him to dislike people getting close to his mouth with anything. That would be a big issue as we want to start him in daycare toward the end of next month. We don’t expect the daycare to have an employee available to just feed Noah and give him medicines all day.

I just feel like I have to justify this surgery because Maria and I sure don’t want to put Noah through it, especially if it’s not absolutely necessary. He’s been through enough already. We’re looking forward to the results, though, and I think Noah will be much better off. Hopefully, it will be as the doctor doing the surgery said, "The only regret people have is that they didn’t get it done sooner."