Surgery day

Today Esther had surgery while on ECMO.

She had a good night, her chest tube did not bleed at all. When her surgeon came in this morning she was very surprised at how well Esther was doing.  Her doctor said whatever we did last night, or prayed, worked. Praise God. Hopefully God continues to work and heal Esther!

They spent the morning prepping her. She needed to be on the ventilator for surgery and she handled that transition well. They headed down around 9 and took about 45 mins to set up. During the surgery they moved all her insides down and put a patch where the diaphragm would be. It all took a little over 3 hours. The doctor told us that she had everything up in her chest. Her stomach, intestines and part of her liver. Having her liver in her chest is a severe case of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. While your intestines and stomach are soft the liver is hard and makes lung growth much more difficult. Her diaphragm was mostly gone. They use a gor-tex patch where her diaphragm would be. Normally, as a child grows the skin attached to the patch will grow with it. Since Esther had such little diaphragm she will probably need another surgery as she grows.

We are very thankful with how well the surgery went for Esther. 24 hours after surgery we are on watch for bleeding. She is still on blood thinners so it is a high risk. In a day or 2 they will aggressively try to get Esther off ECMO.

Right now she still has the support of ECMO and I am praying this will make recovery from surgery easier. All on hopes that she can seamlessly come off of ECMO soon.

Please continue to pray. Dave and I had such peace today. While we are so concerned for our daughter we also feel so comforted by God and find such peace in that.

Esther, before she went down for surgery.