Home Sweet Home

I am at home! Soooooo glad to be here!
Surgery is easy, its the recovery that's rough.
Here's the deal, the doctor's were actually unable to find where I was bleeding from. There were too many possible places. They diagnosed me with Portal Hypertension. Basically it means that the portal vein which goes into the liver is like a backed up sink. The blood does make it through but takes its time and starts to pool. There's no way to fix that vein. My surgeon consulted with several other surgeons nationwide, she called them the "old boys," and the consensus of opinion was to decompress the hypertension by doing a shunt. In this case it means that using my own veins, the surgeons created a new traffic pattern for my blood to circulate back into my heart and circulatory system. It is pretty complex. The idea is that it keeps the blood from pooling near my liver and putting too much pressure on the nearby collateral veins causing them to burst and bleed. Pretty smart, huh?
Here's what's cool:
A week before surgery, the pastors and elders came to the hospital to pray and anoint me with oil. That was awesome. What was even more amazing was while we were in prayer, my surgeon opened the door to my room. She saw what was going on and rather than back out, she walked in held hands with us and not only prayed with us but received prayer herself. We asked that God would give her wisdom for the decisions that needed to be made and that God would anoint her hands to perform the operation. How often does that happen?
Because this surgery was a big deal, she needed to ask another surgeon to partner with her, not to mention the assistant surgeons. As God would have it, He provided the premier liver transplant surgeon not only at CHLA but nationally to be the partner for my surgery. As it turns out there were some decisions to be made during surgery and God provided wisdom and authority in the OR.
After surgery, when my surgeon spoke to my parents she said, "the surgical procedure went well and now we'll let God do the rest." There's some follow-up stuff left to do but I know God will be present for those too. I'm on the couch resting, and I know God is at work allowing my body to accept what's been done and heal. God is so present in all of this. Thank you for amazing and continued prayers. He is pleased to answer.
Love, Steve