Day 1: Surgery

Surgery day is always a hard one. Thankfully Macy was in great spirits! We got to pthe surgery waiting area, checked in, and were in a room by 6:30 a.m. We were visited by the nurse, 2 people on the anesthesiologist team, and then our surgeon.  Macy finally looked at us and said, "let's get this over with!"

Sporting her giant hospital gown, paper shorts, and gigantic footies, they rolled her away playing Fruit Ninja on the anesthesiologist's phone. They have rolled her away 21 times before, but it never gets easier.

They told us surgery would take 4-6 hours, so we had to wait in a surgery waiting room. I am not a patient waiter. I pace back and forth, try to do something to occupy my mind but only make it about 2 minutes, and I check the monitors 1,000 times even though I know it will tell me that she is still in surgery.

After 2 hours with no update, I finally asked for one. I had given the surgery team my cell phone number and was surprised when they called my cell to update me. They told me she was stable. All of her lines were in and they did a few angiograms. They were working on the partial fix. About 2 hours later they called to say that she was done. She did great, and the surgeon would be out to talk with us.

About 30 minutes later, Dr. Superina rounded the corner. He said she did great, and showed us some imaging. Non-occluded (closed) her portal pressures were 14. When he occluded fully, they jumped to 50! Whoa! So he played around with what he wanted to do, and left it partially occluded with her pressures at 30. He purposefully gave her portal hypertension (too much pressure) so that he could force blood through her tiny, weak portal vein and all the other smaller veins to and in the liver.   Originally we talked about 2 days in ICU before going back in to fix her completely, but he informed us he was thinking it looked more like 5. Not exactly what we wanted to hear since she has to be completely sedated the whole time to avoid any movement.

It took well over an hour before we could see her. Jeremy and I both started crying the minute we saw her. It's just so hard to look at her in that condition. She has a ventilator hooked up that is breathing for her. She has an IV in one arm, an arterial line in the other arm, a central line in her neck, a catheter for urinating, and a line checking her portal pressures running through her stomach.  She is receiving over 10 medications through her various lines. Her incision is not closed, but covered. It is in the typical transplant shape (peace sign). She's going to hate it, but I am sure she will wear this scar proudly just like the others.

She tried to wake up 6 times this first evening, despite all the medications and the paralytic. Such a Macy move! They had to up her doses. They worked to get her vent set up perfectly so that her blood gases looked good, and needed to find the right dose of heparin ( blood thinner). So now it's just a wait and see what she does phase. Keep the prayers coming!