Anni is getting a new liver...

Remember my friend Moreena, and her kids Anni and Frankie?

It's Moreena's birthday.

And Anni is getting a new liver today.

As she put it,

Please please please keep her safe.
Please please please send peace to this donor family.

Please please do. I'm not a prayer, but I'm praying.

We're waiting to hear.

Update at 8:34 am 10/9/08: Anni is doing okay. Update from Moreena below the fold. And it's Frankie's birthday today.

Moreena writes:

Dr. Superina just came to talk to us. The new liver is all hooked up, and is making bile already. Surprisingly, they ended up using the entire liver. Her old liver was so enlarged that her abdomen had extra room, and the new liver fit (barely).

Dr. S said that she is still bleeding, but only trickles here and there. He said that there was so much scarring that it wasn't even like doing a liver transplant. When I asked him what it was like, he stared out into space at a loss. Rather like a man who's just come through a harrowing 10 hours of surgery and is now being asked stupid questions by the parent. Mainly, he said, it was that the scarring was so bad that he sometimes couldn't tell what he was cutting through. Her old liver was adhered to her diaphragm and her bowels, and it was pulling a blood supply from both of them, which might have been why that liver held out so long, despite the fact that her portal vein (the liver's main blood supplier) had completely shriveled up and disappeared. Clever body to find the blood to keep her going, but it made the end of the surgery (we're told) a maddening task of plugging all sorts of little leaks after the old liver was removed.

She needed 14 units of blood, and Dr. S. told us to expect her to need more since they weren't able to stop all the bleeding. He's planning to take her back in on Monday or Tuesday to do a final close of her abdomen, but she might have to go back in sooner if the bleeding doesn't stop on its own.

Thank you all for commenting and keeping me distracted through this long night. Thank you donor family, wherever you are. Thank you Universe or God or Science or Doctors or whatever moves through this world to occasionally bestow the grace of another day, whether we deserve it or not.

Happy Birthday, Frankie. Happy New Day, Annika.

Send Moreena comments at her post here.