Baby Emerson’s surgery updates

09/05/2023

Emerson is almost 8 months old!

He is able to still p**p on his own, sometimes with a little help with miralax or an e***a. But he's still goin strong ❤️

07/18/2023

Since I didn’t give any updates during our surgery. He got his last surgery on June 28th, and after 9 days in the hospital and many complications, he no longer has a colostomy bag ❤️

06/15/2023

*HUGE shoutout to everyone who has helped us so far*
I am reaching out for help from my friends, family, p*ers, anyone who’s willing to help us out right now. Because to be honest, I’m struggling. Mentally, financially, every kind of struggle you can think of right now. 😔

I’m going to post my Venmo and Cashapp, (i also have every other form of electronic payment as well). I am trying to raise money to get a car for us to be able to go to Emerson’s appointments. We have a new car seat, now we need something we can put it in!
Whether it’s from marketplace, or we can raise a decent down payment for a dealership, as long as we can find SOMETHING. I am taking advantage of other resources too! We just need our own vehicle because Emerson has A LOT going on with him.
I’m more than willing to accept gift cards and things as well for food! Or even food delivery, that would help us tremendously too. ❤️

Venmo: MichelleMarie22
Cashapp: $michellabella22
Zelle: 541-653-3213
Apple Pay: 541-653-3213
Facebook pay

**I will NOT make a gofundme because they take a ridiculous amount of money for fees**

Here’s a backstory for those of you new to my Facebook;

As a lot of you guys know, but some of you don’t, I have a medically fragile velcro baby (extremely attached to my hip) that is 5 months old. We’ve undergone 2 surgeries so far, with at least 1 more very large surgery and possibly more after that. We are switching his surgery team to a better equipped hospital, which is almost 2 hours farther away. His next and largest surgery will be within the next month or two.

I also got into a car accident 2 weeks ago totaling my car. Which means, I have no car for Emerson. I had a concussion for a few days, a large gash in my head, and I went through days of the worst pain I’ve ever been in. And as a mom, my job at home didn’t end during that.
We have a very small truck with only 2 seats, so we can’t take Emerson anywhere unless I borrow my dads car, which I have been doing for work and appointments but that can only happen for so long.

06/07/2023

Emerson update:

He has TWO teeth!! Not just one!! I noticed his second bottom tooth last night. RIP to my nips when he gets his top ones. 🥹

I got the call to schedule his “last” surgery yesterday. This one is the ostomy reversal (the bag) and to officially connect everything.
I have a referral up to Doernbechers to try to switch his surgery teams so we can have all of our people working in the same hospital instead of 2 different hospitals with sh*tty communication.
His surgery is scheduled for June 28th at Riverbend in case we can’t switch to Doernbechers in time, 3 weeks away.
If we do get ahold of Doernbecher and they allow us to come up to meet and go over all of the questions I have, then Riverbend is out of the question and is no longer where we will be going for any of his care. Sure, Portland is a long drive with not having a car, but we will figure it out like we always do.

Am I freaking out? Yeah, a little bit. Will this be his actual last surgery? No probably not, especially if he does have the bladder problems they think he has. They were talking about surgeries on his bladder in the future.
I’m honestly thinking of not even doing it, and keeping his bag on permanently.

From everything I’ve seen and been told by people in his same situation or that has kids born like him, there’s over a 50% chance this surgery won’t work or will stop “working” 2-3 years down the road. Or he won’t have enough bowel or enough muscle mass to be able to push anything out in the beginning of it. He will have to live with laxatives everyday to make sure he never gets backed up, and that’s IF he can even push by himself.

I personally don’t see a reason to put him through another HUGE surgery and days in the hospital being in more pain than he was in last time, (it’s 2 surgeries done at one time) just to get 2-3 or possibly more years of p**py diapers and then another surgery to get us right where are right now but permanently next time. It doesn’t seem worth it to me. The pain and all of the surgeries just to end up back at square one, it’s not worth it. If I would’ve done research and asked the questions I know to ask now, I wouldn’t have let Riverbend make me think that these surgeries were the only thing that could give him a good quality of life. People live with ostomies everyday! I don’t see why Emerson can’t live with one either, it’s a part of him now and he’s so used to having it.

I have A LOT of questions for the doctors up at Doernbecher to help make my final decision on his next surgery. And I have 3 weeks to decide what I want to do for him, because I don’t know what I want to do..

06/05/2023

Emerson has his first tooth coming in!!
He will be 5 months on Wednesday ❤️

05/31/2023

05/29/2023

05/24/2023

Emerson update:

We’re getting updated on vaccines today and talked about some future plans with surgeries and all that.

He weighs 12lb 12oz so he’s gained 7oz in the last 6 days 🤣 (4th percentile)
He’s 23.62” long (2nd percentile)
His head is 15” (1st percentile)

His doctor says he’s growing sooooo good and is so proud of us! ❤️

05/22/2023

Update:

We’re headed home from Portland!
They wanted to teach us how to take his catheter out and put it back in every few hours at home, and we said no.
Our Dr from riverbend didn’t send over anything saying that he had to use a camera to place his catheter the first time, or how hard it was to do the second time. And they opted to let us just keep it in so it’s less stress and possible pain for Emerson.

The good news:
his kidneys look awesome! No swelling or anything so they’re not worried about that, which is great.

The bad news:
Just going off of the information they have about Emerson, they are saying that there is an extremely high chance he will need to use a catheter to p*e for the rest of his life. They think that his bladder just can’t squeeze the p*e out like it’s supposed to, but they won’t know for certain until his next surgery is done and he’s healed from that. We also have to go back in August/September to do a bladder test to see if his bladder even works properly, and if it doesn’t and he still can’t squeeze the p*e out after he’s healed from the surgery then we will be resorting to catheter’s at home.
We will probably eventually have to start doing it at home anyway since catheters are only supposed to stay in for about a month at a time, and in 8-9 years he can start learning how to do it himself. And they said that trying to potty train him is going to be HARD… but they will be with us every step of the way.

05/20/2023