CT woman with endometriosis embraces being ‘guinea pig’ for Danbury Hospital’s new surgery system

News-Times – Saturday, November 30, 2024
By Kaitlin Keane

DANBURY — After struggling for over a decade with endometriosis that spread to her colon, Karen Sullivan found lasting relief at Danbury Hospital, where she was the first patient to undergo surgery with the hospital’s newest robot-assisted system.

“I’m glad I had it done,” the 45-year-old New Preston resident said of the surgery. “I actually pushed the surgery off two times because I was just having doubts. But I’m glad that I had it done, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long.”

The surgery used the new Da Vinci 5 robotic-assisted system, which the hospital said enables surgeons to perform minimally invasive procedures with greater precision. Before the Oct. 2 surgery, Sullivan had undergone two laparoscopic surgeries to relieve the symptoms of endometriosis, a painful condition in which tissue that is similar to the inner lining of the uterus grows in other places where it doesn’t belong.

“I thought it was kind of cool,” Sullivan said of the new surgical system. “I thought, ‘Cool, I’ll be the guinea pig.’ I was kind of interested to see how it would make any difference in me, in my recovery.”

Danbury Hospital will use the new robotic-assisted system for a variety of procedures, including colorectal surgery, head and neck surgery, general surgery and gynecological surgery, according to a statement from Nuvance Health, its owner. New Milford Hospital, which is also part of Nuvance, will soon also offer surgery using the system, according to the statement.

The new system, which enhances the hospital’s surgical capabilities, is designed to operate through smaller incisions, reducing trauma to the body and resulting in shorter recovery times and hospital stays, according to Nuvance Health.

This will help patients recover faster, experience “much less pain” and have a “quicker return to their daily activities,” said Dr. Marc Casasanta, a colorectal surgeon who performed Sullivan’s surgery at Danbury Hospital.

“The technology is just becoming more and more advanced,” Casasanta said. “And these instruments and the camera and the visualization allows for such a precise attack on your field for the surgical procedure. … Being precise is a huge benefit, and it’s taken surgeries that have traditionally taken hours for us to do and really shrunk down the time.”

Within two weeks of her surgery, Karen Sullivan said she had returned to her normal routines. Within a month, she said she was feeling “awesome.”

“I feel no discomfort, no pain,” she said. “I would say I’m 100 percent.”

‘Like a light switch’

A mother of one and owner of the New Milford children’s store Logan Locker, Sullivan said she started experiencing issues with endometriosis when she was about 30 years old. For her, the symptoms appeared as “an intense pressure on my insides, like someone was crushing my colon area.”

She said she had laparoscopic surgeries at ages 31 and 33 to relieve the symptoms. After going six years without discomfort, Sullivan said she started experiencing “on and off pain” in her lower back and colon, which her doctor confirmed was due to endometriosis during a colonoscopy last November.

“The endometriosis had sort of folded the colon in half, so it was like a C-shape,” she said.

Sullivan said she was informed in February she had Stage 4 endometriosis, the most severe form, which can cause chronic pelvic pain and severe menstrual cramps. She said she was initially advised to have a hysterectomy but to also consult a colon surgeon to discuss her options.

She was referred to Casasanta, who informed her of the new robotic-assisted surgery system. He told her it “gives them a lot more detail, like they can see a lot better with the camera and can feel the texture of the tissue with this machine,” Sullivan said.

The four-hour surgery was performed Oct. 2 at Danbury Hospital. She said Casasanta told her he had to take out a damaged section of her colon during the surgery.

The narrow turn in Sullivan’s colon created “the perfect setup” for the robotic-assisted surgery system, Casasanta said. He said the system’s camera allowed him to zoom without having to get too close to the tissues while still having “that very crisp three-dimensional view.”

“You can control way more in the operative field and improve your exposure and visualization and get the surgery done in a lot safer manner,” Casasanta said of the surgery system.

Sullivan said she had five small incisions, which she considered the most uncomfortable part of the surgery. Apart from the incisions, she said she didn’t feel any pain and spent only two nights in the hospital.

For the first 24 hours after her surgery, Sullivan said she was on a liquid diet, followed by a low-fiber soft food diet for two weeks before she was cleared to gradually return to her regular diet.

Looking back on her recovery, Sullivan recalled her surprise in waking up one day with “zero soreness and discomfort” after years of on-again, off-again pain.

“It was four weeks after surgery and my belly was still sore and achy,” she said. “Then the next day, it was just completely gone. No gradual improvement, just like a light switch, and it was 100 percent.”

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