A friend of mine has a little girl who is having heart surgery next week. I've pasted in an email from Terri requesting prayers for her daughter Abbie. Please pray for Abbie and for the doctors! I've also included a link to Terri's Caring Bridge website over in the links section.
As most of you know, Abbie has been plagued with a persistent effusion (fluid behind her heart) for the past year. We have traveled back and forth to Little Rock every 4 -6 weeks for a year trying to find something that would get rid of the fluid- we tried steroids and colchicine, neither of which has done the trick. Luckily, Abbie has been asymptomatic the entire time with no damage being done to her heart. But, the fluid can't be there indefinitely and the longer it's there the more problems that could result so she is going to have to undergo surgery again. It has been scheduled for Friday, March 10. They will be removing the anterior portion of her pericardium (heart sac). They chose the anterior portion rather than the posterior portion so she doesn't have to go on a bypass machine. We were hoping they were just going to be making a 2-3 inch incision at the bottom of her sternum to do whatever procedure they decided on, but with this procedure they are going to have to do a sternotomy (which means they have to reopen her entire chest like they did in her original open heart surgery). We were really saddened and terrified to find that out, even though we know the surgeons are making the decisions they feel are best for her. As long as there aren't any complications ( and we are desperately praying that there won't be) she should only be in the hospital about 3 days, but her at home recovery time will be 4-6 weeks. This should get rid of the fluid that is there and prevent fluid from accumulating in the future.
We will leave for Little Rock Wednesday afternoon because she has to be in the Cardiology Clinic Thurs, at 8am so they can begin running all the necessary steps before the surgery takes place on Friday. We will keep everyone as informed as we can. I will try to update my caringbridge website with updates. For those of you that don't have the address it's www.caringbridge.org/visit/terripittman .Please pray for the doctors and surgeons that will be operating on her and pray that she will come through the procedure easily without any complications and have a quick recovery with minimal pain.
We appreciate all of you and the emotional and spiritual support you have provided us and continue to provide for us.
Love,
Terri and Ryan
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