Sean Johnson...

[IronmanTT]

Don't personal know you both but prayers and positive thoughts for his quick recovery...

[vr4chick]

Okay... so the ERCP was used to determine the problem. And apparently the pancreas isn't where it's supposed to be...

You said there's an arterial embolism and blood collecting in his Pancreas. Is it safe to assume this is all connected? I'm picturing a stretched, longer, narrower artery leading to the pancreas that was more prone to blockage than a normal one.

You have a duct that runs through your pancreas. At birth one section of your pancreas flips 180 degrees....allowing the internal ducts to line up. When sean was born the section that is supposed to rotate 180 degrees only rotated 58 degrees...so his pancreas has never worked right....after years of doctors blaming his pancreatic issue on alcohol, now they know the real reason.

Embolism will be confirmed tomorrow...

[AdamVR4]

You have a duct that runs through your pancreas. At birth one section of your pancreas flips 180 degrees....allowing the internal ducts to line up. When sean was born the section that is supposed to rotate 180 degrees only rotated 58 degrees...so his pancreas has never worked right....after years of doctors blaming his pancreatic issue on alcohol, now they know the real reason.

Embolism will be confirmed tomorrow...

Is this reasonably good news? Surely this is correctable/treatable?

[vr4chick]

Is this reasonably good news? Surely this is correctable/treatable?

Its bad because there is 40 years worth of damage to his pancreas...luckily hes under a good docs care and they may be able to correct it better thanits ever been.....

[TwIzTeD_3kGt]

Hope you get better man! My father in law went through a similar thing with his Pancreas and pulled through 100%. Good luck!

[vr4chick]

Sean is in recovery. His surgery time was approximately 7 hours...now were just waiting for a room...they are very unsure how long he will be here. Could be a week...it could be 2 months.

[BladeOmega]

Best wishes for a swift recovery.

[vr4chick]

A quick explanation of what they found during surgery on Sean. Initially they thought he was going to be in the OR for roughly 2 hours. The surgery ended up being just over 7 hours.

The doctors found a pancreatic divisium:

Pancreatic divisum is a congenital anomaly in the anatomy of the ducts of the pancreas in which a single pancreatic duct is not formed, but rather remains as two distinct dorsal and ventral ducts.

So basically the pancreas was never formed into 1 piece. It remained 2 separate pieces all his life.

The human embryo begins life with two ducts in the pancreas, the ventral duct and the dorsal duct. Normally, the two ducts will fuse together to form one main pancreatic duct; this occurs in more than 90% of embryos. In approximately 10% of embryos the ventral and dorsal ducts fail to fuse together, resulting in pancreas divisum. In utero, the majority of the pancreas is drained by the dorsal duct which opens up into the minor papilla. The ventral duct drains the minority of the pancreas and opens into the major papilla. In adults however, this situation is reversed whereby 70% of the pancreas is drained by the ventral duct. Therefore in pancreas divisum, where fusion of the ducts does not occur, the major drainage of the pancreas is done by the dorsal duct which opens up into the minor papilla.

The end of the "tail of the pancreas" developed a pseudocyst, or hemorrhagic pancreatitis. The hemorrage started to bleed within itself. Because Sean was on the thinner side and he maintained a healthy diet. The surgeons believe that is the only reason Sean didn't pass away. He was in grave danger. We knew that emergency surgery was going to be needed. That very long week took forever.

The surgeons went in and disconnected a section of Sean's smaller bowels and hooked it up to the smaller section of his pancreas. The theory behind this is to create 2 separate pancreases. They removed 1/3 of his pancreas and his spleen. They removed the spleen because it shares a main artery with the pancreas. There are complications that could arise due to the surgery but this was the best way to give Sean the best quality of life. Sean will face the risk of being in constant chronic pancreatitis (pain) and diabetes. The good thing is since this was caused by a birth defect...if Sean becomes a diabetic, he is eligible for a pancreatic transplant or islet cell transplant...

[EZnTn]

Healing thoughts go out to Sean.
You're dedication through all this has really given Sean unfathomable strength Linda.
You are really a blessing to him.

[vr4chick]

Healing thoughts go out to Sean.
You're dedication through all this has really given Sean unfathomable strength Linda.
You are really a blessing to him.

Thank you for the kind words. I love Sean more than I can describe.