Steve Acamo

Welcome to Steve's page. Everyone has been so understanding as they try to get updates but I am losing track of who has been updated and who hasn't. Quick recap: Steve came in to the hospital on June 28 for hernia repair on both sides of his abdomen. In Addition to the hernia repair they also placed several pieces of mesh to help prevent future hernias. Everyone knows that Steve has had some long recoveries and complications after past surgeries but we were optimistic that there had been some new things that were going to make recovery easier. There is a new medicine they can give to block the constipating effects of narcotics that they can give to help the bowel to keep moving. They didn't have to resect as many adhesions and scar tissue so they didn't mess with as much of the intestines. Unfortunately Saturday when I came to visit Steve said that his abdomen was very hard and he was having a hard time breathing. They had taken his iv away because urine output had decreased and they said he was fluid overloaded and was running a 99.9 fever. I had the kids up to visit but they were excited about it being the holiday weekend and were very wound up. I asked his mom to insist on a xray or ct scan that day. Thing were not right.
They did the scan and found that his abdomen was filled with fluid but they didn't know if it was stool or blood. They called me and said they had to do emergency surgery. They took him down and called to update us during the surgery and told us it was stool in his abdomen. They had to tear out all the mesh that they put in to prevent future hernias because it was contaminated with stool. They washed out his abdomen and found the leak. Unfortunately the leak was in an area they could not get to because it would have taken hours to cut through the adhesions and scar tissue to get to it. So they inserted a catheter into the hole in his intestines , blew up the balloon to plug the hole and pulled it tightly thru the skin to the outside and stitched. The theory is that the tissue will heal around the tube when they pull it out it should close itself. ( I am very nervous about this) . After surgery the doctor told us if they had not gone in and done surgery he would not have survived the weekend.
Saturday evening went ok. Sunday he struggled to get pain under control. After this last surgery his bp has been running very high as high as 184/112 at times. They keep telling us it is due to the stress on his body from 2 surgeries in 3 days.
Monday he started running a low grade fever. White count was 10.They started wound vacs on his open He started having runs of svt. ( rapid heart rate) one run Monday evening and one Tuesday morning. They thought that his central line may be causing it so they pulled the central line out about 5cm. This seemed to stop the arrhythmias. Tuesday his white count jumped from 10 to 18. Started vancomycin. Wednesday white count still 18. Wednesday night they get some cultures back that show he has a fungal infection. Breathing is hard. He had a collapsed lung and it had been collapsed since Saturday. They are checking his lungs and having him do different breathing exercises. Xray on Thursday showed his lungs were worse than they were on Tuesday. Thursday white count jumped again to 25.1. He had 2 more runs of svts and another arrhythmia called a aivt. Doctor called for a cardiology consult. They did and Ekg Thursday and an ultrasound of heart on Friday morning. Blood pressure continued to run high 174/107 this morning. White count this morning down to 25. So not much change in that area