Going to surgery

9:00PM Dr. Healey came to tell us they are finished. They are happy with the liver...need to closely monitor blood flow and he'll be on a heparin drip again (to prevent clotting). There is still some risk of infection since they went in and stirred up the bacteria that were in the old liver. It sounds like it was in pretty bad shape. Mario had some low bp's during the surgery, caused by the infection so he's on medication for that. Tonight is watching that, tomorrow we do and ultrasound to confirm blood flow is good and over the next few days we balance blood flow versus bleeding very carefully. They're letting us back soon so I'll probably do my next update in the morning. Take care all

7:30PM Dr. Reyes came out to tell us that everything is still going well. He's happy with the bloodflow and Dr. Healey is finishing up connecting the bile duct. should be 3-4 more hours.

5:30PM Received another update that the liver is in and they have blood flow, they are in the process of reviewing everything via ultrasound. They estimate another 1-3 hours until they start to close him up. The nurse said that "everyone is happy with how things look so far." He agreed when I asked if it seemed things were going more quickly than expected. I am surprised that they have completed so much of the surgery already.

3:30PM We just received an update that they are starting to attach the donor vessels to the aorta (this is the part where they redo the hepatic artery that was blocked before). The nurse said he'd update again when they have blood flow to the new liver.

2:00PM We talked to the OR nurse. He said they've started to remove the old liver and Dr. Reyes is still preparing the new one. He'll update us when the old liver is out and then again later on when they have blood flow to the new liver. It's going to be a long afternoon and evening of waiting. I will update when I can. Thanks for continuing to send Mario strength.

11:00AM Mario is with the team in the OR now. This time it will probably take longer since they have the artery to repair so we are expecting a long wait. We're going outside to the play area with Eva for a bit and will be offline. We'll update later as we get reports from the team.

8:00AM We just received an update that the donor was going into surgery around 6am so they expect us to be taken in around 11am or so.

7:00AM We're sitting here waiting for them to tell us things are ready. Word is that everything is still on. Will update when we send him to the OR.