Recovery Day 1, Round 4

Last night was a difficult night for Jennie. Even though we talked with Dr. Sutherland and his staff multiple times about making sure she had a high enough level of pain medicine, Jennie came out of surgery with not near enough medicine, similar to the last surgery.

It took us about 3 hours before we were able to get the on-call doctor to come up, and when he did he was afraid to increase the pain meds too much. For some archaic reason even though the hospital is totally computerized now, they can't seem to access her previous records from the other surgeries to determine what level of medicine she required in the past. Anyway, when the team of doctors came in this morning they did increase the medicine enough to give her some relief, it just seems ridiculous that she was in pain for 10-12 hours with little relief.

Other than the pain issue, it seems like Jennie is recovering well from the surgery. She still has a lot of abdominal pain as would be expected, but her hemoglobin has stayed fairly high and there doesn't appear to be any complications at this point. They are also taking additional steps to prevent her from getting MRSA again, we just hope that it works.

Thanks to everyone again for the prayers and support, hopefully Jennie will make a lot of progress in the next few days.

Surgery is done

Dr. Sutherland came out just a few minutes ago and it appears the surgery went pretty well. He was able to remove the ulcers, a little more of the stomach, and he was able to cut one of the Vagus nerves. He was unable to find the other Vagus nerve, but he seemed to think the one would likely do the trick. If it doesn't work, he said the other one could be done without opening her wide open again.

He also noticed a large amount of adhesions and removed as much as possible. We are not sure why she is developing the adhesions so quickly, but the slow recovery the last 3 times due to MRSA is bound to factor in. Anyway, Dr. Sutherland was pleased with the surgery and the fact he was able to finish in less than the 4 hours he estimated makes us feel good about it. Thank you all for the prayers, hopefully the recovery will go smoothly.

Prayer Group

Since yesterday was the National Day of Prayer, here are a few pics from Rita's work at a special Prayer Vigil they had for Jennie yesterday. It is amazing to see how much support we have, and it really helps to make things easier. Thanks to everyone again!

Surgery is finally underway . . .

Just a quick note to let everyone know that they finally took Jennie back to Surgery about 3:45 pm CST and the surgery is expected to go 4-5 hours. I will let everyone know if we get any further updates, but it will likely be a while.

In the mean time here are some more pics from Rita's work. They sent quite a few, so I only uploading a couple of them, but Jennie has loved them! Thank you all so much for providing a few laughs today, especially since the delay in the start time made it that much worse.

Family Pics

So the Family decided that for this surgery the theme would be "Fighting for Jennie". Here are a few of the family pictures. They really seem to have made Jennie's day, and I am still getting them in my e-mail so I will post updates as available. If anyone has any pics just send them to me, I know Jennie will love to have additions when she gets out of Surgery!

On the surgery side, Dr. Sutherland's morning surgery is running behind so they are waiting to put Jennie under until he is ready for her. I will let you know when we have some idea of a time frame.

Meeting with Dr. Sutherland

Today we had the pre-op appointment with Dr. Sutherland and Jennie did the boost test to determine how well the islet cells are working in the liver. We haven't heard anything tonight, so we assume her blood count was acceptable and that she won't need a transfusion prior to the surgery.

The surgery time is set for 1 pm tomorrow, and we have to be at the hospital at 11 am to get her admitted. I will likely be doing several posts tomorrow as we get updates. Jennie and I both appreciate all the prayers and support we have received. Just knowing how many people care and are following along I think helps both of us a lot.

Back in Minnesota again . . .

After two days of many hours in the car, we finally arrived in Minneapolis a little before 8 pm tonight. For anyone that may not know the game plan yet, we will be meeting with Dr. Sutherland again on Thursday in preparation for the surgery on Friday at 1:00 pm. We anticipate Jennie's blood level being low on Thursday, so we will probably spend several hours getting a unit or two of blood.

As for the trip, we made it to Bloomington, IL yesterday which is about an hour and a half south of Rockford. We got a later start than we wanted, so we decided to try and make up the extra time this morning rather than rushing to find a room at midnight or later. We did get out about 9 this morning, and after a short stop in Wisconsin Dells for some Outlet Mall shopping, we made pretty good time on the rest of the trip. We had a few short bouts with heavy rain, but it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately the Minnesota Twins were playing tonight about the same time, and the stadium is only a few blocks from the hotel, so we spent a little extra time in heavy traffic.

Tomorrow we will finish unpacking, as we are all pretty tired from the drive. We are going to have to go to the store and purchase groceries and the rest of what we need, but other than that we will likely take the day easy and try to let Jennie relax as much as possible before Friday.