Big Day Tomorrow

Hi Friends,

Well, tomorrow's the big day. After a bit of an up and down day, the final call was that Lily will be going to the OR tomorrow. It's still not a guarantee that they'll actually be able to do her connection tomorrow, for a couple reasons.

First, she's been spiking a fever off and on for the last couple of days. The good news is that they did a blood culture and so far nothing has come back, meaning theoretically, no infections. Also, they started her on some broad-spectrum antibiotics just in case. The doctor said it's entirely possible the fever is just her body's reaction to the blood clot. But there's still the chance of them finding infection when they get into the operation tomorrow. If that was the case they would have to hold off on the surgery in order to treat the infection. 

Secondly, there's the chance that her esophagus ends may not be long enough. Based on what they can see from the x-rays it looks like it is long enough, but it's possible that when they trim back the ends to get rid of damage from the stretching there may be too much tension to connect them. If that was the case they would have to reinstate the traction again for a few days to get some more length.

The surgeon said he is cautiously optimistic, due to what he's seen and his experience, that neither of those things will be the case tomorrow and they'll be able to go ahead with the connection as planned. Lily is the first case tomorrow, so we should know pretty early in the day in which direction things will go.

Also after discussion with our surgeon here, it came up today that even best case scenario it's possible that Lily could end up needing to stay here in Boston for up to a month..after tomorrow's operation. That's twice as long as we were anticipating our "best case" being and presents a lot of logistical issues for our family. We're working on our plan-B, with several options..none of which are particularly pleasant. So our hopes and prayers are that somehow things work out that we'll all be able to go home together in a couple weeks, but we also need to somehow be ready for the fact that that may not happen.