Allen Hobbs

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Allen has been diagnosed with familial adenomatous polyposis. He will have the first surgery to remove his colon and rectum on April 19th. The second surgery to redirect his digestive tract will happen after he has healed from the first surgery, hopefully 6-8 weeks later.


David and I had been noticing that Allen was tired. He would come home from soccer this fall/winter and before his BUSA soccer practices, I would call for him upstairs to remind him it was time to leave for practice. I always found him asleep in his bed. Allen has always been an early riser and never really napped, so we thought this was odd. We had also heard from his BUSA coach, Josh Greene and Coach Webb at MBHS through Coach Josh that Allen was having trouble keeping up.   He was not feeling well in early November so I decided to take him to our pediatrician, Dr. Robert Sellers. .  As we discussed how he was feeling with the cold and sinus issues, we decided it would be a good idea to do a blood panel.  The results from the blood panel returned with anemia. Of course, we thought that the anemia explained the tiredness, but why was he anemic? Dr. Sellers put him on an iron supplement and rechecked his levels 4 weeks later.  After the recheck, the levels did not improve much. We proceeded with testing of his stool, as anemia is common in teenage girls but not in teenage boys. Since there was blood in the stool, we were referred to Children's. Dr. Mestre saw us at Children's and, after an office visit, he wanted to proceed with an endoscopy and colonoscopy.  Allen had those test done on Jan. 31st. 4 weeks later, we met with the surgeon at UAB to discuss removal of the whole colon.