Some pictures of Scott on MR Rig's home page
Welcome to Scott Ridlers Home Page
This page is contains a brief history on Scott, and is hoped that any other parents that have children with similar problems can read about our trials and tribulations. If you have any questions or queries regarding Scott, please feel free to email: [email protected]
Scott was born on 3/5/93 and was very poorly. He was born with a left diaphragmatic hernia, which in crude terms means that his stomach and bowel had formed where his left lung should be, because of a hole in his diaphragm. This then prevents the left lung from forming properly. This was repaired 2 days after he was born by an excellent consultant paediatric surgeon at the Queens Medical Centre Nottingham.
After the diaphragmatic repair, Scott still was having problems feeding, and was found to be having a Gastro-oesophageal reflux, this is where the muscle at the top of Scott's' tummy wasn't closing tightly enough to keep the stomach acid down, and also the muscle at the bottom of his tummy, was too tight and not letting very much of the stomach contents to pass through, This amounted to Scott having severe reflux (constantly vomiting!). A Pyloromyotomy was tried to tighten the top muscle and loosen the bottom muscle, but this didn't improve things.
After a few months, Scott had a Thal fundoplication/gastrostomy and a feeding jejunostomy. This enables him to be fed via a tube into his intestine and he has a bag connected to his tummy to drain away the excess stomach fluids. This gastrostomy bag needs emptying every 3 - 4 hours (night and day) and the contents fed back into him via his jejunostomy as a bolus feed.
Scott is nil by mouth and receives all of his nutrition via a kangaroo pump into his jejunostomy.
In the early years Scott had a very bad aversion to food, either watching other people eating or even holding food. This has got better as he has got older, and now he's happy to hold food and he even puts food into his mouth!. He even went through a faze of eating OXO cubes! (when we say eating, he doesn't actually eat the food, he just mouths it, even mimics chewing, but spits out the food, normally over his mom!)
Over the last five years Scott's medical needs have changed, and it's been a difficult struggle to keep up (especially for his mom, Tracy). He needs supervision 24 hours a day, every day, he cannot wash himself, dress or undress, and has never had a bath or been swimming (although with the help of a company called AquaSheild who are developing a special water guard to cover his chest and tummy, he may well soon have his first proper bath!)
Scott originally was to go to to a special needs nursery, and then a special needs school, but with a lot of help from the local school (Amington Heath) he now goes to normal school and is happy, stable and has quite a few friends.
Scott's jejunostomy doe's not have it's balloon inflated, and is held in place only by his dressing, and can be removed if pulled. Another common problem is the tube becoming blocked, and having to be replaced. This happens even though the tube has been flushed through with water after feeding or giving of medicine. If anyone reading this has similar problems and can give us some advice, then please feel free to do so.
This page is currently under construction, and new items will be added as time goes by, so please keep checking back.
If you have any comments on this page, please feel free to email us: [email protected]