Transplant Day

Jessie and Thatcher have both been through a lot today. Jessie is across town in the adult hospital asleep on pain medicines and Thatch is here beside me in the ICU. Jessie left this morning at around 5 am and was getting prepped for surgery shortly after. Thatcher was on Tylenol, an inter-venous benadryl, and an immune suppressant so he was resting pretty well even though he had not eaten since 10 pm. The surgeon came to the 7th floor at around 7:45 and they took us to surgery prep. I signed a few more consent forms and Thatch was on his way to have his poor excuse for a liver removed. After a couple hours I found out Jessie was doing well and that the lobe of her liver was anatomically correct to match up with Thatcher's. They removed approximately 30% of her liver and put it on an ambulance headed over to us at Children's. The next news I got was that Jessie was out of surgery and in the ICU at Montefiore in stable condition, mostly incoherent but doing well. Around 5pm the surgeons came out to talk with me about how well his surgery went. They said Jessie's liver looked great and was the perfect size for Thatch. When they got it all hooked up it "perfused nicely" and due to the size they were able to close him up both muscle and skin. They did not have to give him blood and very little fluid. Overall, in their opinion, the procedure went as good as it could have and that's exactly what we have all been praying for.
Somebody has the unwanted task of keeping Jessie away from here until she is released around 5 to 7 days from now. Good Luck with that.
As for all of us we know that we still have a long road ahead but feel like this is a huge step in the right direction. We always knew Thatch would never get better with the liver he was born with.

So here we are around around 17 hours later, they are still separated but in a special way closer together than they have ever been.