Updates on Surgeries

I have been praying hard that God will coordinate the timing of all these surgeries and procedures, and as it turns out, Matthew will only be having the laser eye surgery today. It was confirmed yesterday that they will be doing the surgery in both eyes. I spoke to the doctor that will be assisting the procedure and he said they will be putting Matthew back on the ventilator, he'll be given general anesthesia and the surgery should take about an hour or so. Before the surgery, they are going to dilate his eyes because they actually shoot the laser through the dilated pupil. They are tentatively scheduled for 1:00 pm but it could be as late as 3:00 or 4:00. Since this was an emergency surgery, it was "added" to the surgery list and may get bumped around a bit.

He was scheduled to have his upper GI test yesterday but for some unknown reasons (or as I like to think, it was God) they kept putting it off until finally the radiologist called late in the afternoon to cancel. The radiologist wanted to schedule it for this morning and as soon as I heard that they wanted to do it the morning of his eye surgery, I immediately jumped in to say that I thought there would be complications with the anesthesia and having contrast dye in his stomach. I always thought you had to have an empty stomach for at least 24 hours prior to surgery. Turns out I was right. The nurse who had Matthew yesterday agreed for the test to be performed this morning until I spoke to the doctor about the fact that Matthew won't be NPO (nothing by mouth) for 24 hours before surgery. As soon as I told them that he immediately jumped on my side and said that the upper GI can't be done before surgery. So, now with that long explanation, Matthew is scheduled for the upper GI on Friday, but of course it will depend on how stable he is after the eye surgery today. I often wonder what the heck would be going on down at the hospital if I wasn't there to defend Matthew...

In addition to all this, he is definitely scheduled for surgery on Tuesday to have the deep IV line installed. I believe it is called a Brovia or Broviac. The same surgeon who did Matthew's PDA ligation on his heart may end up putting the line in. If not him, then one of his associates. I am praying that Dr. Albanese be the surgeon who does the surgery, because he is the best surgeon at Stanford. It is unknown whether or not they are going to do the intestinal surgery at the same time as this Brovia surgery. They can't do the intestinal surgery on Matthew until the upper GI is done first and it will depend a lot on how Matthew is doing before they do the upper GI. So potentially, he may have the other surgeries on two separate days next week.

Please pray that God gives Matthew the strength he needs to make it through the surgery. Pray that God clears the doctors' minds of stress and that He guides their hands during the laser surgery and that He gives them strength and endurance during the procedure. Pray that this surgery will fix the problems with his eyes and that they won't have to do a second surgery. Pray for Matthew to recover from this just fine without complications. Please continue to pray for us to have the peace we need during and after the surgery that everything will be alright. Thank you all for your support.