Abigail - Surgery Day

Wow, what a day! Abigail's surgery went well and for that we are so very thankful. Faith, hope and Love, right? Yesterday was very long, full of prayer and quite a bit of worrying on our part. We arrived at 8:30am yesterday morning to do our routine diaper change, dilation, and feed.
Slow motion a for a few hours and we left at 11:15pm after we saw Abigail post op.

Abigail was on Pedialite the last few days which we quickly found out was not her favorite. She was not allowed to have anything after 10:00am so that made her 9:00am feed her last. At 11:30 we had signed consent forms (scary) and were planning on her having surgery at 1:00pm, it was to last 4-5 hours. Shortly after, they told us she was going to surgery early and started preparing the transport bed. Well she wasn't exactly thrilled with not getting fed and proceeded to scream for the next hour and we couldn't do much about it other than rock her to no affect. The early start time never happened and finally after the screaming had died down they took her back at 1:15pm. We walked her back and said goodbye and joined our family in the waiting room. At 2:30pm they called and said they were wrapping up anesthesia and putting in a central line. They would continue to give updates every hour the rest of the evening. However, 6:30pm came and went and then so did 7:30pm. Nothing. We were freaking out quite a bit and trying not to think of what all could be going on. Around 8:00pm we got a call saying they were closing things up. Finally, at 9:30pm, the doctor came out and talked to us about the operation. The short version of what he said was that there was a lot of swelling and inflammation to the area on her liver where they would connect the intestine. The gall bladder was non functioning and neither were the other ducts that drain from the liver. The doctors performed a Kasai procedure on Abigail which bypasses the gall bladder and connects the liver directly to the intestine. All of this, was done over an 8 hour span and included quite a bit of time on the front end for anesthesia.

Her heart held up well during the surgery but now Abigail will have to recover and be closely monitored to see if the fix to her liver is working properly. We are so thankful for the tedious and difficult work of the surgeons and staff. What a true gift!

The support of our friends and family has also been such a blessing. We ask that you would continue keeping Abigail in your thoughts and prayers as her little body recovers. Thanks.

The three most important things to have are faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

Family picture before surgery.