Pray for Sarah

Please pray for my 3 year old niece Sarah. She had surgery 7 weeks ago to fix a hole in her airway. (Here's the post about that surgery: September 21.) The recovery hasn't gone as they had hoped it would. They believe she is still aspirating. My sister's email below explains everything. Please pray for them. Pray for Sarah, the doctors, the surgery this Friday and my sister, Carrie, her husband John and their little boy Matt.

Thanks so much.
Jane Anne



Here's John and Carrie's message-

Since we had such a good response to this method:

Guy Version: Sarah's recovery hasn't gone as well as the doctors had expected. She will have surgery again on Friday. Please pray that the doctor finds something.

Girl Version: Many of you have asked how Sarah's recovery has been. We haven't sent out an update because we really didn't know what to tell people. The past 7 weeks since her surgery, it has been cold and flu and H1N1 flu season. So, how do you know when your child is sick as in normal child sick like most children are right now with the cold or flu or H1N1 flu and how do you know when it is post surgery related? That is the question that even her doctors had all agreed was hard to define. But now that 7 weeks have past and all "normal sickness" treatment methods have been tried, all doctors (her primary care doctor and her pediatric ENT--Ear Nose Throat doctor that did the surgery) agree that what has been going on with Sarah is not the normal sicknesses that have been going around.

She has not been 100% healthy since her surgery. Some days are better than others, but she hasn't had a symptom free week. She has coughs, sore throat, and other cold-like symptoms. The major thing that really concerns all the doctors is that once a week Sarah has been getting a fever. Not a high fever, but I learned today from the ENT that Sarah getting a weekly fever is actually more troubling than just getting a high fever. Previously, her primary care doctor prescribed antibiotics to see if that would help, but Sarah still got a fever while on the antibiotics and after she was off of them--telling the doctors that this isn't a normal sickness.

She has been monitored closely by her doctors in the past 7 weeks. After getting another fever yesterday, per the primary doctor, I called the ENT who wanted to see her immediately. Today Sarah went to Johns Hopkins and saw the ENT. The ENT is very concerned about Sarah and her poor recovery. With the ongoing fevers, there is a good chance that Sarah is still aspirating. The ENT again brought up that Sarah was in an extreme amount of pain while in the hospital that really concerned the doctors. At this point, she doesn't know what is wrong, but definitely said something is very wrong. She had Sarah have x-rays done today--chest x-rays and throat x-rays. I realized how concerned the doctor is when she said she wants to do surgery on Friday (less than 48 hours).

On Friday, Nov 13, Sarah will have surgery. They will do a bronchoscopy and laryngoscopy (basically putting a camera down her air pipe to look at everything from the previous surgery to fix the hole in her airway (laryngeal cleft). If the doctor finds something wrong, then she will come out and talk to us about it and then go back in and fix it. Depending on what she finds will determine how long of a hospital stay it will be.

PLEASE pray that the doctor will find something wrong on Friday so that she can fix it. Perhaps, that sounds wrong, but even the doctor said that if she didn't find anything we'd be worse off because we would still need to figure out what is wrong with Sarah, because something is very wrong. No news isn't good news, when you need to figure out what is wrong so that you can fix it. Sarah's health has been worse the past 7 weeks than before the surgery. The doctor did have a few theories of what could be going on/what complications could have happened but we won't know anything for sure until surgery on Friday.

We have to be at Johns Hopkins at 9 am on Friday and the surgery will start at 11 am.

Please, please pray that the doctor finds something so that Sarah can get better. Also, please pray for Sarah--after all that my sweet little 3 year old has been through the past 2 years, she hates doctors, hospitals and anything medical.