DAY 31

I have barely had a chance to post about the meeting yesterday as Faith has been awake so much. But here is what the results are:

Faith's heart and lungs are working well. Our main issues are stomach, liver and kidneys. From the CT scan, they do see there is a block within the ducts that connect all of these organs. This is not allowing her to be fed through her stomach and is making bile excrete in her system, creating liver failure and the jaundice. It is only a miserable, downhill slope if something is not done.

So, the procedure I spoke of that that is done with the machine they do not have at this hospital is out of the picture. Dr. Haight spoke to numerous specialist at different hospitals and it cannot be done. The end of Faith's pancreas has some breakdown and if the scope were to hit it and break it apart, it would be fatal. Apparently it could not open up the ducts with a stent, like originally thought.

Our next option, and the one everyone would like to see happen, is having Interventional Radiology go in through her liver from the side of her abdomen and open up the ducts. The problem with this procedure is that Faith is extremely high risk and she could bleed to death by going through the liver. Because of this, Interventional Radiology may refuse to do it.

If they refuse, the next option is to ask Pediatric GI surgery to open her back up and try. They too may refuse since they have already opened her up 3 times. Doing the procedure through Interventional Radiology is a better choice because they can see better by using cat scan and xray going through the liver than the naked eye by Pediatric Surgery.

Both procedures have the risk of her bleeding to death. However, she already has this risk as she has shown us numerous times. Monty and I have decided that we would rather have her die from us trying to help her...than to not do anything at all. Not doing anything leads to death, as well, and not a pleasant one.

If someone agrees to help us and Faith were to make it through the surgery, it would give us hope that her organs can start to make a comeback. We could get her fed and things could start to heal. The primary thing that needs to heal is her abdomen. At this point, with all of our organ troubles, the open abdomen is not going to heal. Everyday that it is open, increases the risk of infection that can be fatal as well. She would still need her feet amputated at some point too. Bottom line is that even if the surgery is succesful, we would still have a long, scary road ahead of us.

We feel that Faith is worth taking the risk. She has shown us over and over how strong she is. We have to give her the chance. For us, we can't live with not doing anything and that is obviously something to be taken into account....what Monty and I could live with. We fully understand the risks, but there are no good options here. We would rather her go with us knowing that we tried everything we could to keep her here. That is what we can live with.