Joey remembers: After arriving in Curitiba the doctor had someone pick us up at the airport and take us back to the Hospital. The surgeon met us at the hospital and got us admitted and up to a room. Once up in the room he put a catheder in Jena's side and a bag to catch what was draining out of her. That first night was horrible. I slept on a chair kind of a thing that folded out in to a bed and it was hard as a rock. Also on the first day back i caught a taxi from the hospital and went to a store to try and get some groceries and a clothing store to get some clothes. During our second stay at the hospital they moved us to different rooms three times. When we were at the hospital we could use the Internet but the system was kind of fickle in that every day we would have to go to the front desk and get a new username and password to be able to log on to the internet there.
Jena remembers: that night, we flew from Sao Paulo back to Curitiba. We arrived at the hospital again about 10 PM. Our surgeon was there to meet us and poor Joey had to sleep on the hospital sofas. We were told it would only take a couple days to let this heal, so we'd be on our way soon.
The surgeon first attached a cholostomy (sp?) bag to my abdomen around the area that was leaking. He inserted a catheter in the opening and stitched it in place. No anesthesia...Jena was pretty dang tough. She was very dehydrated because a lot of the liquids she'd been drinking over the past several days hadn't gotten past her stomach, so it was hard to find a vein to get her some IV fluids. But she was still pretty calm. The surgeon wanted to start measuring how much fluid would leak when I wasn't drinking anything. So nothing by mouth until he could figure out exactly what was going on. Jena was super bummed, she was so thirsty!
Over the next couple days, she had a contrast leak test. She didn't get nausea and throw up the barium liquid even though she said it tasted like the smell of gasoline...and she had to drink it 4 times.
The surgeon found out that when he put in the catheter in her abdomen, it went STRAIGHT to the leak site (we assumed he did that on purpose...we didn't realize that he had no way of planning that).
He told us the leak site was only about 2 mm.
Where everything leaked inside her abdomen, it stayed all in one place. Even with all of her pushing of her gut and moving things around, it didn't go anywhere harmful to her body.
She hadn't eaten food yet, which would have caused more problems if she had.
Her pain tolerance for vein pressure/burning had increased so even though she had to get a new IV each day, she was able to get her antibiotics and fluids more quickly.
She only cried twice through the whole thing...
Joey had the opportunity to go to church in Curitiba: During the whole time we were there i went to church three times. The church members in Curitiba were very friendly. I was introduced to some members who were originally from Argentina and was able to speak with them in Spanish. They told me the chapel where the ward met was the first chapel built in Curitiba, the said it was built in 1956 or there abouts. It had a beautiful baptismal font area. In the font area the font and walls around it was decorated with a mosaic of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdry baptizing each other. I understood alot of what was being said because of knowing spanish. In the relam of gospel words it was interesting to me to hear the similarities between spanish and Portuguese. Being in church there reminded me of going to spanish wards on my mission, there was lots of little kids running around and being noisy. One thing i thought was kind of cool is that on the church benches they had a little plaque posted that said something like "Children please be reverant at church".
Meanwhile, Jena was losing nutrition so she had three options to get it:
1. Feeding tube. Up through the nose and down past her stomach...directly into her intestines. This was the cheapest and seemingly most effective way to get her nutrition, since she couldn't take anything by mouth.
2. Surgically bypass the stomach and put a feeding tube directly into her intestines through an incision. Neither of us wanted that.
3. A central IV line that curled toward her main arteries. This would be very expensive, and the surgeon made it sound like it was a last resort.
So we went with the feeding tube. BAD IDEA!
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