Emergency Surgery

Charlie is definitely a fighter! He's doing slightly better than he was late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, but is still very sick despite being stable. His pressure and blood count started dropping pretty seriously beginning at midnight, and his lactate began to elevate. At 3:30am, we got a phone call that Charlie was bleeding, but they were aggressively keeping up with it, and they were just giving us a heads up. At about 6am, we got a phone call that Charlie had taken a turn for the worse. They needed to operate on Charlie immediately and asked us to come in right away. We were there within 15 minutes. He had been receiving albumin and blood, and they were getting him ready to go to the OR. The doctor explained to us that they wanted to do exploratory surgery to find the source of the abdominal bleeding. Since midnight, his abdominal girth had grown 5 centimeters. She told us that their biggest concern is that while trying to clot off whatever was bleeding, they would cause damage to his Sano shunt. She warned us that there was a chance Charlie would not make it. We were able to spend a little time with him before surgery. We waited anxiously and it didn't take long for them to to come out and tell us what happened - they found a small laceration on Charlie's spleen, and a couple of blood vessels within his abdomen. They left his wound open to drain by vacuum, and were able to repair the vessel damage. They are hoping to close his abdomen within 48-72 hours.

Now we are back to waiting. Every now and then, his heart rate and blood pressure will occasionally escalate, sometimes a response to pain, sometimes for unknown reasons. He is back to having some pretty serious edema throughout his body, so they are really pushing the Lasix in order to get him to diurese. His platelets are down to 68,000. If he reaches below 50,000, they will have to replace those with more blood products. The good news is, Dr. Sinha came to us to reassure us that everything heart-wise looked great. The general surgeon also told us that everything was looking great post operatively. His lactate came back down. The rest of his blood count looks good.

We are deeply grateful for the flood of prayers and encouragement we have received for our brave boy. This journey has been an emotional roller coaster. Each day brings new highs and lows. In a few short hours this morning, we felt every human emotion imaginable. Even though it is extremely difficult, we continue to place our trust in God. We know he is in control and has a purpose and a plan for all of this.