An Update on Gideon

Thursday morning came really early for us! Gideon needed to be up to UVA at 6:00 am which meant that we needed to leave our new home in Moneta, VA at 3:30 am. Needless to say, we didn’t have a lot of sleep the night before.

We checked Gideon in and waited anxiously for his name to be called. Once they called us we followed the nurse down the elevator into the pre-op room. When I walked into that area of the hospital I had to use everything within me not to cry. I think the fear of the unknown came over me. Gideon got all his vitals checked and then we changed him into the cutest little tiger hospital gown. He was swimming in it! Both the doctor and the anesthesiologist came in to talk to us about the procedure, and then we handed our precious boy off to the anesthesiologist and watched him carry Gideon away. Both Chandler and I fought off tears as we entered the elevator that led us back to the waiting area.

The waiting area has a TV so that you can watch when the patient goes into the operating room and then when they come out. I kept my eye on that TV and saw the second Gideon’s number changed over from green (in the OR) to yellow (in post OR). After a few minutes Gideon’s doctor came up and brought us into a consultation room where he began explaining all about the procedure.

He told us how when he got inside with the scope and looked around he found that there was a whole other situation going on. The doctor filled his bladder with saline about 20 times in order to flush his system to see how everything was moving. Rather than the ureter connecting from the kidney to the bladder, he found that his ureter was ectopic and was connected to his prostate area rather than the bladder. There was still an area that was ballooning out, but it wasn’t the bladder wall like they originally thought.

The doctor then explained how he could have gone through with cutting the incision and deflating the ballooning area, however with the balloon being where it was, it could have caused some major damage, resulting loss of continence or fertility.  He said he went with his gut, and I was full of thanksgiving at that moment for the God-given intuition that He places within all men and women. To know that our son would not be able to have children at 6 months of age would have been really heart-breaking.

After talking with the doctor we were led down to see our boy! He was crying hysterically. Once I was able to hold him and feed him he started to calm down. You could definitely tell he wasn’t himself and that he just felt yucky! As the time past he began to perk up and by the time we left the hospital he was in a much better state. I sat in the backseat with Gideon as we made our way back home, holding his hand for much of the drive.

So you are probably thinking what we were…“now what?” Good question! Because the kidney on the right side is not working, it is not passing any urine, which is actually a very good thing in this case, so we will just leave everything as is. However, if the kidney was functioning, they would have to do surgery to either remove or relocate the ureter. The only risk that Gideon is up against now is urinary tract infections (UTI). Gideon has a follow-up appointment in 6 months and between now and then we will just watch out for UTI’s. To help out with this we will be putting him on a probiotic or a cranberry supplement to help naturally prevent UTI’s. Because we are heading overseas next year our doctor wants us to go ahead and have a doctor in Tanzania lined up, just in the event that there were any future complications.

We left the children’s hospital in a bit of a daze, not sure if we were fully comprehending all that just happened. But we did leave praising God for his watch-care over our son and over the fact that once again we were surprised that no intervention was needed. So far Gideon has been full of surprises! And so has our Heavenly Father who cares even more about Gideon than we ever could.

If there is one thing that keeps coming to our minds it is this beautiful reminder from the Psalms:

“For you formed my inward parts;

You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.”

Psalm 119:13-16

God is not one bit surprised by this. He formed and fashioned Gideon and he is fearfully and wonderfully made. We are blessed it is to call Him our son.

Thank you so much for praying during his surgery (that didn’t really end up being surgery!).

Making Him Known,

Jamie (for the Sharpes)