Our Amazing Bodies

We have amazing bodies.  They run well and fairly efficiently for many years.  They get hurt, but in most cases, repair themselves without any help.  Even when they need help, they do the majority of the work on their own, just needing stabilization or similar crutches while they fix themselves.  Sometimes, they work a little too well.

When you have a scar, it's because the body has worked really hard to knit itself back together again.  That's part of why it's bumpy.  The blood vessels come together and work to create new tissue.  The body doesn't like holes, not even ones we think need to be there.  Yeah, like the surgically created stomas.

When it was still the size of a pea.

So what does the body do?  It tries to close it off.  Fortunately, with a stoma, there should be something in the way preventing that.  But it doesn't necessarily stop trying.  We've been really fortunate so far.  Aaron's g-tube stoma would like to close.  He's actually had a small open sore on it for almost two years.  Yeah, a long time.  It bugs me but doesn't seem to bug him, oh well.  His trach stoma has been fantastic.  Really no issues there.  He's had some occasional tears, but they repair themselves nicely and then stop there.  Until last week.

Yep, last week something changed.  Who knows?  Maybe it's getting spring fever and decided that with everything else growing, it needed to put forth some effort.  Over the last week, he's developed a granuloma, a collection of tissue at the base of his stoma.  I noticed it when it was about the size of a pea.  I know it wasn't there much before I saw it because we'd been in the hospital and his whole body had been inspected, by multiple people!  I know we didn't ALL overlook it.

Within the week, it became blueberry sized.  It has shrunk a tiny bit now, but the question is, what's on the inside that we can't see.  He has quit tolerating his speaking valve.  He's gone back to the "I don't know how to breathe with this thing on, HELP!"  Which may also indicate that he's got tissue growing in there, too.  We did a trach change tonight (routine, not emergency) and it went fairly well, although with a lot more blood than we've seen in a long time. 

So what's next?  Probably a trip north for a quick revision and scope.  They'll take off the outer one and look to make sure we don't have it inside as well.  Fun and games.  They never end.  But really, it is pretty cool this miracle we call a body, how it can do so very much.

The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. 

~Julien Offroy de la Mettrie