Help Support Our Brave Baby's Healing Journey

My name is Samantha. I have three kids and recently gave birth to my fourth, a perfectly healthy baby boy named Giancarlo Cortez Igartua, on September 4th, 2024. We were discharged from the hospital two days later and were home for the next couple of days. My second youngest son ended up testing positive for COVID and pneumonia that following weekend, so we had to quarantine. The next day, at 5 days old, I took my baby for his first pediatrician appointment where I was told my baby was perfectly healthy and tested negative for COVID but was told it was inevitable and more than likely he would contract it. We were sent home with instructions to care for him. A few hours later, my son started projectile vomiting, which was alarming for me because we had never had any problems feeding at all, so I instantly rushed him to the ER thinking maybe it was a symptom of COVID.

When we first arrived at the ER, it was packed. When they finally tended to us, my son had continued to throw up and also stopped feeding. The doctor also tested him for COVID and reassured me it was probably a stomach bug. She tried sending us home, but I told her as long as my son was not eating and throwing up, I wasn’t going anywhere. So she admitted us for hydration. During the time we waited for a room, they got a urine sample from my son, but from how dehydrated he was, there was barely any urine for them to get a sample. They attempted to put in an IV, but from him being severely dehydrated, his veins collapsed over 10 times until they were finally able to find a healthy vein. While in the ER, they did an ultrasound on his stomach, but they didn’t tell me why.

When we finally got to the room, a doctor came in and asked if there was a chance we dropped our son on his head because he was showing signs of a head injury and they wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure he wasn’t bleeding from his brain. My husband was so offended, and I tried to deescalate the situation by telling him the doctor was just doing his job. I was assuming my baby probably had COVID, but it was too early to tell. Throughout the night, they continued to monitor my son for hydration, where he continued to cry off and on in pain. After trying to stay up with him, I eventually fell asleep, only to be woken up at 7 am to two nurses talking about how my baby had a high heart rate and his temperature was really low. They ended up changing his diaper and saw that he had blood in his stool. Not long after, all kinds of doctors and nurses stormed in trying to figure out what was going on with my baby. They took an X-ray of his abdomen and saw that he may have NEC (Necrotizing Enterocolitis). One of the doctors called in a surgeon who happened to be in the hospital at the time. She explained what the X-ray was showing and told me that she was not on call and explained that they were gonna run more tests and if my baby needed surgery, her colleagues would be the ones to perform it.

An upper GI series was performed shortly after and showed that there was a blockage in my son’s small intestines. That same doctor who told me she was not on call came in during the upper GI series and said she wasn’t gonna sit around and wait for lab results and decided she was going to perform an exploratory surgery on my son right away. They instantly prepped him for surgery and took him back within 20 minutes. After about 45 minutes, I was told my son was diagnosed with a Malrotation with Midgut Volvulus. In other words, when my baby was in the womb, his intestines had not completely rotated until after he was born, resulting in them twisting around his superior mesenteric artery, blocking out blood flow and cutting off his circulation. When she went in, she was able to untwist his bowels but wasn’t sure if they were salvageable because they had very little blood flow. So my son’s incision was left open and covered with a bag so they could go in again 48 hours later to determine if his bowels showed any signs of life.

After surgery, my son was placed in critical care in the NICU where he was also placed on an oscillator, TPN (IV nutrition), antibiotics, and heavy pain/sedation medication. After 48 hours, the same surgeon went back in and told us that she had neither good news nor bad news for us and that our son’s small intestines were in limbo and that there was a 50/50 chance that his small intestines had survived from being twisted for so long. She decided to give it another 48 hours and continued to leave him open. After patiently waiting and praying for good news, my son was opened up by a different surgeon for the third time. After 20 minutes into surgery, we were called into a private room where we were told our son’s bowels were basically completely dead with only 1 cm of living small intestines remaining. We were told that our son was not compatible with life and given two options with only 5 minutes to choose because they had left our son open on the operating table and that with either option we picked, our son was gonna suffer tremendously.

The first option was to leave his bowels untouched and let our son pass away from natural causes (infection from dead bowels). The second option was to cut out his dead intestines and attach his remaining living 1 cm of bowels to his colon where he would live a life in the hospital his whole life on IV nutrition (TPN: total parenteral nutrition), more than likely suffering from continuous infections, blood clots, collapsed veins, and organ failure from being on long-term TPN. They said since he was a baby, he was not a candidate for a bowel transplant until he was 5 years old and that it was very rare to be approved for one. Even then, he wouldn’t make it to the age of 5 years old to get one. At the time, it was way too much to process with so little time. I decided as a mother I didn’t want my baby to live a life full of suffering, so I went with the first option to close him up. I was told that my son would start to deteriorate in the next following days or week and to expect him to change different colors. They explained that they would still continue to care for him and keep him comfortable during that time on comfort care. In the event that he would decline, he would be DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) and they would leave him to his demise. During this time I prepared all my family to come and say their goodbyes.

While we waited for him to succumb to his diagnosis, they waited for his incision’s swelling to go down before they closed him up completely. My son was so swollen after those multiple surgeries, they told me they would keep my son as comfortable as possible and that he would more than likely never open his eyes again due to sedation or breathe on his own again due to the oscillator. Throughout this whole ordeal, I never stopped crying and asking God to perform a miracle on my baby. That following week, my son defied all odds and opened his eyes. He was also placed on a breathing respirator since they didn’t feel he needed the oscillator machine anymore. Despite everything they told me, my son’s swelling went down, he started to wake up more and more, they eventually took off his breathing respirator, and he was breathing on his own. He continued to thrive and even started to smile! I knew that my son had the will to live, and that alone changed my whole perspective about the situation.

My son’s antibiotics had just finished, and they told me since he hadn’t started to decline in the last two weeks, that now was the time for me to prepare myself for the worst. I decided that I was gonna advocate and fight for my son, so I revoked the DNR and continued to have them treat my son. The doctor on call told me that would be the worst decision I could make because once again, there was a very small survival rate and my son would suffer in a hospital his whole life. I told him I didn’t care what the consequences were, that I believed in God and miracles, and that my son was gonna prove science and statistics wrong! He had no choice but to respect my decisions and continue treating my son. After our conversation, he immediately ordered antibiotics to be reinstated, labs to be drawn, and a consultation with surgery to discuss a new plan for my son.

The first surgeon who performed my son’s surgery reached out to me and basically told me the same thing, that my son was not compatible with life and that it was a very small percentage he would be considered for an intestinal transplant. But she would reach out to her colleague in Cincinnati and ask him for a personal consultation for my son, but good news was highly unlikely. A few days later, I received a call from my son’s surgeon stating that she had nothing but good news for me and that Cincinnati reached out and after reviewing my son’s medical records, he is the PERFECT candidate for an intestinal transplant and the doctor would accept his transfer to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital! The doctor explained that me leaving my son’s intestines untouched was probably the best thing I could have done for my son because there’s a chance his intestines can slowly start to regenerate or heal on their own. He stated my son indeed does have a chance at survival and can live a normal life in the future!

More than likely, we would have to permanently reside in Ohio while my son recieves proper treatment and waits for the operation he needs to survive. I’m making this GoFundMe and telling my son’s story in hopes to be able to get the help me and my family need to make this sudden transition a little easier but in also hopes to raise awareness to this rare diagnosis & let other parents know that there still is a chance at survival for their babies.

I also want to thank everyone for your continuous love and prayers, it just goes to show even more that there really is a God and He really does listen and answer them!

Information about Malrotation of the intestine:

While Malrotation is rare, it can happen. Awareness is important. It can literally happen to anyone and knowing to get to children's hospital, saves lives.

#intestinalmalrotation

#intestinalmalrotationawareness