This
is the mysterious story of Kellisa’s 25th surgery which took place in
February 2025 at Suter Roseville Medical Center. The surgery lasted three
hours when the surgeon told us it should only take 60 minutes.
October 2024 – Kellisa had her first riding horse therapy session in more than 10 years and loved getting back in the saddle. Unfortunately, she started complaining of pain in her hips shortly after the ride. We took her to the doctor when the pain didn’t go away after a few days, and pain relievers weren’t helping. Tests were run and a few x-rays were taken. Nothing was obvious as far as her pain in the hip area, but in the corner of one of the x-rays, the radiologist saw something they couldn’t explain. A dark area of the stomach led them to believe a foreign object was “trapped” and would require further investigation.
An
Upper Endoscopy was performed in December 2024, and the object was too big to
be removed.
This
is how we ended up extra nervous in the waiting area when the surgery went way
beyond its original estimate. To make matters worse, we had Egypt with us. She
was too nervous to leave for school not knowing her sister was alright, so we
let her accompany us to the hospital. If the surgery would have been completed
close to on time, Egypt would have missed just a few minutes of her first
period class.
As
parents with 27 surgeries performed on our children, including Everett and
Egypt, you might think we’d be experts in remaining calm and hiding our true concerns
from Egypt, but the opposite is true. It doesn’t get any easier and Egypt was trying
to keep her concerns to herself, but we knew she was justifiably worried.
The
surgeon finally emerged and we followed him to a private area. He didn’t give
any noticeable clues to let us know that everything went well.
Instead,
he explained how the surgery was more difficult and challenging because Kellisa’s
g-tube had pulled the stomach closer to her skin and they are “cemented”
together. While dealing with this unforeseen challenge, the surgeon accidentally
cut into Kellisa’s colon which needed to be immediately repaired. It was at
this point that he finally told us that Kellisa was fine and would be waiting
for us in recovery.
He
then showed us a picture of the object, it looked like a polished stone in the
shape of a heart.
He
asked if we had any idea of how it got inside Kellisa’s stomach and we were all
at a loss. Mainly because it was too big to swallow and we never had any hearts
of this kind in the house. Also, since aging out of school in 2021, Kellisa doesn’t
leave the house often and when she does, at least one parent is always close.
So,
we had absolutely no idea where this stone came from or how it ended up inside
Kellisa’s stomach. It’s been more than a year, and we still don’t have a good
theory.
Kellisa
was released the following day and was in a good deal of pain for the first few
days, even with strong pain killers. It didn’t help that she had a drain coming
out of her stomach that needed regular attention and had the propensity to
leak. After a rough week, Kellisa was back to her normal self.
Kellisa
turned 26-years-old just over three months after this surgery and for only the second
time in her life, her age was greater than her surgery totals. If you’re
curious, Kellisa had to wait until her 24th birthday in 2023 for her
age to exceed her surgery total for the first time. This isn’t surprising when
she had six surgeries before her first birthday and 19 before her 7th.
Another
interesting fact, Kellisa turned 8-years-old in 2007, her first calendar year
without a single surgery.
We would welcome comments below with your theories on where and how this heart-shaped stone ended up inside Kellisa’s stomach.
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