Let’s start off by saying that Haven is now successfully on dialysis and is doing well with it so far.  We’ll need to keep a close eye on her as dialysis has many high risks associated with it (especially for Haven).  One of the bigger concerns with this treatment is blood pressure.  Removing large amounts of fluid can have a very negative effect on one’s blood pressures.  However, her pressures have hung in there even though she has lost 800 mililiters from her abdomen alone.  That’s an amazing amount.  In fact, we had a few people say, “I’ve never seen that happen before”. 

What’s even more interesting is that those 800 mLs weren’t removed by dialysis, they were drained!  When she was in the operating room this morning, they drained out 500 from her abdominal cavity.  Over the course of the afternoon she drained another 300 from the tube they placed, but we hadn’t even started the dialysis yet!  Her torso literally shrunk like a deflating balloon right before our eyes.  It was amazing to see how much free fluid was inside her abdomen.

So, it appears that we may be moving in a good direction for now, but it did not come easy this morning.  While we wait in the surgery waiting area, a nurse comes out to give us an update on the progress of things while Haven is in the operating room.  Usually, she just tells us what the surgeons have done so far and how Haven is tolerating things.  However, this time she said that she just got a call from the operating room and things weren’t going so well.  She asked us to come back to a private waiting room closer to the O.R. 

While we anxiously waited there, she ran back to the room to find out exactly what was going on.  We found out that before the operation even began, while they were transferring her from her bed to the operating table they lost her heart rate and blood pressure.  In the hospital world, they call this coding…it’s not a good thing, obviously. 

As the surgeon was telling us later, we learned that during the transport (from her room to the O.R.) she was not able to be sufficiently ventilated.  The breathing machine is not portable so she had to be manually ventilated with a breathing bag and an oxygen tank.  This is fairly routine, but unfortunately, since Haven is on such high settings because of her fluid overload, they were unable to ventilate her as well as she needed to be during the trip.

So, by the time she got back to the oeprating room she had too much carbon dioxide (what we exhale) in her lungs and since her lungs weren’t getting enough air during inhalation, all that fluid in her abdomen partially collapsed them.  This caused her to lose her heart rate and blood pressure.  The surgeon immediately began doing compressions on her chest (like CPR) but was unable to compress her well enough.  They paged for one of the cardiologists to immediately come back.  They did this for two reasons, one given Haven’s heart problem they needed a heart doctor to assist and two, this doctor is very tall and strong and has very large hands.  He was able to put one hand around each side of Haven’s chest and compress her with enough force to eventually get her heart going again.  This episode lasted for ten minutes.  Scary to say the least.

Once they saved Haven’s life, the surgeon came out to speak with us before proceeding any further.  He told us what had happened and asked us if we still wanted to continue.  We discussed it with him, and he mentioned that if Haven truly is unstable and we take her back to her room, we may not be able to come back to the operating room for some time.  By then, it could be too late to do anything at all.  Knowing that dialysis is the last chance we had at the time to give Haven a chance at recovery, we wanted him to procede. 

As you can imagine, time seemed to have stopped from that point until he came back to speak with us again after he finished with the placing of the dialysis tube.  But, he did come back and told us that she did great with the procedure.  We were relieved, but were reminded of just how fragile this little life is.  We’re so thankful that she was able to survive this very big day.  We’re also thankful for the doctors and nurses that not only today, but every day we’ve been here that have been instrumental in giving our daughter a chance at living a life when she didn’t have a chance on her own.  We’re so thankful for the strength we receive from our God and Saviour to persevere with joy.