The ranch in Union has been in Lezlie Posey's family for five generations. Lezlie gestures across fields of baled hay toward the hills, where the second story of the original farmhouse peeks through the trees. Family still lives in that house. Here at the newer house, which the family uses as a gathering place, she has spent the day working in the yard. Everything is neat as a pin.
"I love it here—I spend as much time out here as I can," she says.
It is evening now, and Lezlie has one more task before heading back home—bottle feeding an orphaned heifer she calls Teeny.
"We never sell the ones we name," she says, smiling down at Teeny, whose eyes are half closed in milk-slurping bliss. It is a perfect, country-summer evening. A gift.
Does Lezlie think about second chances and how close she came to dying?
"Yes," she says. "All the time."
In early March 2019, Lezlie was finishing up her shift at work when she suddenly did not feel well. She told a co-worker she thought she had indigestion, and asked if they would close up so she could run a quick errand before she headed home. By the time she had driven to the store, Lezlie was extremely uncomfortable. At the checkout, she asked the clerk if they had antacids, and would she mind getting them for her.
"I even had to have her help me open them. I never have heartburn or stomach issues—ever. So I wasn't sure what was happening, but I thought it must be my gut," Lezlie recalls.
Once home, Lezlie continued to feel worse, experiencing a level of excruciating pain she had never felt. By 10 p.m., extreme nausea had also set in and she was afraid to leave the bathroom.
"I didn't really think it was in my stomach or bowels, the pain was higher up under my rib cage, but I just couldn't figure out what it could be," she says. "It never occurred to me my ascending colon was stuck behind my stomach!"
A rare hernia
General surgeon Christopher Woodworth, MD, says what Lezlie was experiencing is an extremely rare internal hernia. A loop of intestines had twisted and pushed through a small opening between the liver and the stomach—called the "foramen of Winslow"—and was stuck up behind Lezlie's stomach. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), this occurrence represents only 0.1% of all abdominal hernias.
The medical term for what happened to Lezlie is volvulus, explains Dr. Woodworth. It happens when the intestine twists around itself and the mesentery. The mesentery is a set of tissues attaching and supporting the intestines to the rear abdominal wall. Dr. Woodworth discovered during surgery that Lezlie's mesentery was unattached (which he believes has been the case all her life), allowing her intestinal system more mobility. Unfortunately, the intestinal tract above the volvulus continued to function; filling with food, fluid and gas.
Emergency surgery
Still at home and in excruciating pain, Lezlie had begun to vomit. She realized there was a chance she might not make it through the night without medical help. She called her son to take her to the Emergency Department (ED) at Grande Ronde Hospital.
"I told my son to call ahead and tell them we were coming because I knew I couldn't walk into the ER under my own power. He said, 'I can carry you if I have to, Mom.'" Lezlie says.
When they reached the Hospital, the ED staff came running out with a wheelchair and quickly got Lezlie into a room.
"They started hooking me up to all kinds of things—tubes, monitors and a bunch of stuff—I don't remember what all," she says. She was happy to see a familiar face, ED physician Lewis Baynes, MD. "He told me I needed a surgeon. I had never met Dr. Woodworth, but Dr. Baynes told me Dr. Woodworth was a good man and an excellent surgeon. I trust Dr. Baynes, so that was good enough for me."
Lezlie remembers how relieved she was when the anesthesiologist came in to explain what he was going to do. Her last thoughts before going into surgery were a stark indication of how much pain she had been experiencing.
"I was so happy to see that anesthesiologist. I just wanted to be put to sleep. I didn't even care if I didn't wake up. My body just couldn't fight anymore," she says.
Of course, Lezlie did wake up. She was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and her pain was gone. She found out that her blood pressure had been 60/30 when her son brought her in; that she had been in critical condition and would need a few days in the ICU.
"I still didn't fully understand what had happened and how rare it was," she says. "But I did know that if it wasn't for Dr. Woodworth, I wouldn't be here. The first thing I said to him when I went in to get my 27 staples removed, was, 'You saved my life!' I really wanted to hug him, but I wasn't sure if that was OK," she says.
"In 25 years," says Dr. Woodworth, "I had never seen that type of hernia, but by virtue of our training, a general surgeon is capable of handling anything that happens in the gastrointestinal tract. I had trained for it. Once I was able to get inside to see what was going on, I recognized it and knew what to do to fix it for Lezlie."
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