Dear Friends,
It is 9:30PM, and we are in the PICU waiting room. They are closing Amanda up now after about 6 hours of surgery, and will be bringing her back here soon. We spoke to Dr. Kato around 15 minutes ago. He said the main problem they had were the many adhesions that had built up among all of Amanda's organs. He said these could have been made worse by the rejection Amanda has been through. It took a while to separate her organs and inspect them.
He said Amanda's liver looked good, and her pancreas and bowels looked OK. He said her diaphram muscle was a little stretched, which would make the reflux problem worse, but that the adhesions probably actually helped the reflux from getting worse. They tightened the diaphram up a little. They also achieved their main goal of the surgery, which was to wrap her stomach around the bottom of the esophagus in order to constrict it and stop the reflux. They removed her j-tube, which had begun leaking, and put in a double-lumen g-tube, with one lumen going into her stomach and one into her intestine for feeding.
The surgeons' biggest concern was her lungs. It looks to them as if she now has bacterial pneumonia in both lungs. They were not able to scope her lungs in the OR. They will take a look tomorrow. She is on a ventilator and probably will be "for a while".
All in all, while we are worried about her lungs, and concerned about the possibility of rejection, we are happy that this long surgery is finally over and we hope that this will be the turning point in Amanda's grueling road to recovery.
Tonight Amanda is in the good hands of the staff of the PICU. We were able to get a room in our old home, the Transplant House, where we will hopefully get a good night's rest. We want to thank everyone who has sent good thoughts and prayers over the last couple of days. Your support has been so important to us.
Love
The Buddemeyers