Quick update:

Another summer - another surgery.  That seems to be a reoccurring theme over the last 4 years.  Kendal had a great first year at Manchester & did great in classes, basketball and softball.  Overall health is stable, but she continues to have the severe pain attacks.  Typically, she only has 1 or 2 attacks at a time and they last  around 5-15 minutes.  While in Florida for a softball tournament, she unfortunately had about 20 attacks back-to-back all day long.   She describes the pain as feeling like someone is taking a spoon and carving her insides out.  Needless to say, it's horrible to watch her go through them & to have to worry all the time about one hitting.  With all that, one of the big goals for procedure today is to explore around to see if they can get any better idea of what is going on.  They will be taking several biopsies as well as doing an internal US to evaluate all previous surgical sites.  They also plan to again evaluate the portion of the pancreas that is remaining to see if there is any additional atrophy or any signs of a repeat obstruction.  The surgeon advised that would be highly unlikely with the way the pancreas was sewn into the intestine, however she's back to losing weight and needing to take around 10-15 pills per day when she does eat which are both issues that she had before with the previous obstructions.   After the major puestow surgery, those issues resolved for several months so something changed just not sure what. 

The positive of today's procedure is at the end they plan to place a celiac plexus block.  The purpose of the block is to cut off the pain signals from the abdomen.  If the pain episode are due to spasms of some sort or due to chronic pancreatitis, the block should give her relief for about six months.  If the block works, they can go in and permanently block the nerve in the future.   Please send prayers that the block works!!!  I'm not sure what is worse, the pain she goes through with the attacks, or the fear of having more attacks, either way they need to stop & we pray that will happen today.  

She's expected to be out and in recovery hopefully sometime around 7:30 tonight.  Long day for the surgical team but so thankful to have such a great team taking care of her!