How Today Started vs. How It’s Going

Erica and I are in one of the parent rooms at the hospital processing the next steps for Mercy. I had been sitting by Mercy’s bed, drafting up a post, and then the day changed.

How today started:

I’m at the hospital this morning and Mercy is looking good. She’s had an exhausting week: no feeds starting on Saturday, transfusion and blood draw on Sunday, blood draws on Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday, she had an upper GI test that caused her belly to swell to an extreme that risked rupture as well and an uncomfortable bi-weekly eye test. Today her belly is a tiny bit smaller, her eye test came back normal, her blood tests show the antibiotics are working against the staph infection, she's 10g away from doubling her birth weight, and she just looks comfortable. Things are good so far.

How it’s going:

Mercy’s upper GI test came back. It indicated some sort of potential partial blockage in the small intestine based on how the contrast moved through her system. Doctors believe it will require surgery. They aren’t going to run additional tests since they’ve already stressed her quite a bit and it’d be unlikely that the tests would give us any additional information.

We’ll have to transfer to another hospital for the surgery. This is a blow - we love the nurses and doctors here. Hopefully, we can transfer back once Mercy recovers. We’re not sure yet which hospital but we hope it’s close. Park Ridge would be nice. We’ll have the surgery consult sometime this afternoon and I’ll post a short update for where/when.

Ways to pray:

- Safe, successful surgery

- Praise that we’ve found the cause of her air-filled intestine

- A hospital that is close to us for the surgery