Emergency Surgery

Mercy was just wheeled out of our room to have emergency, exploratory bowel surgery. She has a blockage of some kind. We’re not sure if it is an acute issue that the surgery team will be able to fix during the surgery, or if the problem is that her colon is simply too small to keep up with the rest of her bowels and she needs an ileostomy to allow her to eat and grow while her colon catches up. Either way, after attempting to resuscitate her intestines and relieve lactic acidosis throughout the night and early morning, the Lurie Children's team determined that spending additional time in the watch-and-see approach risked serious complications to her bowels.

We’re all expecting her to come out of the surgery with an ileostomy. It’ll likely need to stay in for several years.

With emergency surgery, there’s a high risk of infection. Since this surgery was unplanned, her intestines are not in the ideal state for an ileostomy. But here we are.

Surgery will likely last about three hours. Thank you for reading, for praying, for caring. We love Mercy, God loves Mercy, and we are thankful you love her too. Pray they relieve her issue and that she avoids infection.

This is such a change from where we were 24 hours ago. Please pray for strength for us as well.