A Patient’s Story–Laparoscopic Colectomy
Emergency laparoscopic surgery saves beloved great-grandmother
Monmouth County, 2010
Theresa Ambrose may be 75-years-old, but she is active, busy and likes a clean house. After undergoing a colonoscopy screening at the beginning of 2010, Theresa was cleaning the tile floors in her two-story home. After carrying buckets of water upstairs to clean her bathrooms, she began experiencing increasing pain in her groin area that eventually became unbearable. Her alarmed family arrived and took her to the Emergency Department at CentraState Medical Center for help.
After undergoing a CT scan, Dr. Seun Sowemimo, the surgeon on call, diagnosed Mrs. Ambrose with a perforated bowel that required emergency surgery. If surgery was not performed within a few hours, toxic infection, resulting from spillage from the perforated colon, could be fatal.
“As frightened as I was, and the fact that it was 1 a.m. in the morning, Dr. Sowemimo was very calm and promised he could fix the problem and stop the pain,” Mrs. Ambrose recalls. “After 75 years, you can tell who really knows what he is doing and I trusted Dr. Sowemimo 100 percent.”
Dr. Sowemimo performed abdominal surgery where he removed the perforated section of colon, thoroughly washed out the colonic spillage and contamination, and created a temporary stoma bag.
“After surgery, Dr. Sowemimo visited me two to three times a day until I was discharged about a week later,” Mrs. Ambrose says. In April, Dr. Sowemimo performed a laparoscopic procedure to reverse the temporary stoma bag. Only 3/4 inch incisions (requiring just band-aids-no stitches) were used. Within a few days, Mrs. Ambrose’s digestive system had returned to normal functionality.
Before her emergency surgery, Mrs. Ambrose remembers thinking about her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and how much she wanted to spend more years enjoying them. Today, Theresa is doing just that. She continues to feel stronger every day (but no longer carries heavy items upstairs). When asked about her health crisis back in January, she speaks only of Dr. Sowemimo. “I pray for him every night. He has the rare gift to make you understand everything will be alright and get you back to your loved ones as good as new.”
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