Update on Mom’s Surgery

Mom’s surgery is complete and she is back on the 10th floor Surgical ICU recovering. Dr. Bansal told us that what he found was not good. He said puss had surrounded the LVAD and various parts of the machine in her chest. It was more widespread than anticipated. They took cultures and sent them to Infectious Disease to see exactly what we are dealing with. Dr. Bansal said it will be a miracle if it’s not an infection. At this time, he is not set on what our next steps are. The next 48-hours will tell us how serious the infection is and help him determine his next steps. In the meantime, mom will continue to recover and he will be consulting with his LVAD colleagues across the country.

Dr Bansal comforting Grannie 

Dr Bansal and Mom after surgery

Please pray that the lab work comes back negative for any type of infection. Please pray for wisdom for our team of physicians as they determine next steps. Finally, pray for strength for mom and our entire family. We’ve been facing this giant for almost eight months. God hasn’t brought us this far to let us down now. We continue to believe for a miracle and ask you to believe with us. We love you all so much!

Why? Why? Why?

As I write this, I’m driving home from New Orleans devastated over the news our family received today. Yesterday, Mom was admitted to the hospital with an abscess at the bottom of her chest scar. Since yesterday, it’s continued to get worse and worse. Dr Bansal came in this morning and in typical “Bansal” fashion gave us some pretty blunt and scary information. We basically have two options on how to handle this abscess... 1. Take out her VAD and put in a complete new one 2. Do a complete wash out, give antibiotics and get Mom listed for a heart.

You can imagine how devastating it was for our family to receive this news today. It completely knocked the breath out of me and I’m still just speechless. Angry, frustrated and speechless. Mom and our family have fought this battle for too long. We have cried and begged the Lord to heal Mom and just when we feel like we are safe, we get hit again. I have asked “Why” all day. Why do these awful things keep happening? Why can’t Mom catch a break? Why? Why? Why? I will probably never know the answer. For now, all we can do is keep praying and keep believing that Mom’s healing is coming. Keep begging God to end this nightmare and keep searching for that light at the end of the tunnel. Please keep praying for Mom and our family. Please specifically pray that this abscess is surface level and self contained. Please pray that no infection has spread to any of her equipment and please join us in begging the Lord for complete healing. 

As I drove home tonight full of heartache, this beautiful sunset was a sweet reminder of Jesus and what He has to offer our family during this difficult time. Tonight I’m refusing to give up hope. When all else is lost, we still have the sweet hope that Jesus gives us and tonight I’m so thankful for that. 


**Edited to add that on Monday Mom will be having surgery to do a complete wash out of her chest. There is no plan to replace her LVAD at this time.**

Goodbye West Tower, Hello Rehab!

Goodbyes are always hard. For over 6 months our family has dreamed of the day that we would get to say goodbye to the West Tower of Ochsner’s hospital. I’ve said over and over “I won’t ever miss this place and don’t care if I ever see it again”. Although most of that is true, this goodbye is still hard. It isn’t because any of this journey has been fun or even enjoyable, it’s because the people we met along the way are ones we’ve come to love. We can not thank the staff of Ochsner enough. The Love you have surrounded our family with will never be forgotten and you will never be forgotten. You will forever be a part of our family. From the constant medical care to the “Holla if you can Swalla” parties to the Sunshine Therapy and “beauty bucket” gifts, we are blessed. We will never be able to repay you for the Love you’ve given my Mom and family. I wish so bad I could list out each one of you, but I couldn’t because I can promise I would forget someone. Just know that you guys are forever in our hearts and we love you so so BIG!

Today we celebrate because the prayers we’ve said and begged the Lord for have been answered. Mom is moving to rehab today. Emotional can’t even begin to explain me right now. A miracle. A complete Jesus performed miracle is what my Mom is. Through her, Jesus has shown the world just what He is capable of. We read stories in the Bible of the Lord raising the dead, the lame to walk, the blind to see, parting the Red Sea... but how often in today’s world do we get to see with our own eyes a complete unexplainable miracle? I can say that I have. I saw with my own eyes the Lord touch my Mom’s body and completely bring to life limbs that were dying. He’s steadied a heart that was beating too fast and out of rhythm. He’s stopped a bleed that couldn’t be stopped on its own. Y’all.. I could go on for days. What Has been done in her life can only be explained by Jesus, and the best thing about all of this is I have complete faith that He’s NOT done. We have so much more of Him to witness. Thankful. I’m so thankful.

Back when things were really rough with Mom. I was sitting on the floor in the ICU waiting room and I said out loud to the room full of people “If the Lord will just heal my Mom, I promise I will spend every waking moment of my life telling the world of his Faithfulness”. Recently, I’ve thought about that moment a lot and wondered if I’m living up to the promise I made Him.
I want everyone who ever reads this blog to know just how much Jesus loves you. I’ve always known He loved His children, but this experience has brought the greatness of his Love to a whole new light. I want you to know, that no matter what you are going through you never have to do it alone. Allowing Jesus to hold you in your worst and best times will be the best decision you’ve ever made. That is fact and something I can whole heartedly promise you. If you don’t know Jesus, I’d love to help you get to know Him. Please call me, text me, message me or just show up at my house. I’m never too busy to share with you about His Love and I promise I could talk about what He’s done in my life for hours. He’s so good y’all, and like I promised Him back in December, I will spend the rest of my life shouting His goodness to the rooftops!

Mom will be starting her rehab at Ochsner’s rehab for the first few weeks to be sure she is 100% ready. After she gets comfortable and Our Lady of the Lake gets trained in LVAD care, she will be transferred to Baton Rouge. The next few weeks will be extremely enduring for Mom. Rehab is gonna be hard. Please continue to pray for her strength and that we don’t encounter anymore complications. Mom still has a long road of recovery ahead of her. I have no doubt, though, that she’s got this and so does God. We love you all so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Brighter Days Ahead

These last few weeks have been extra hard for our family. So many milestones and events have taken place and each one is just as difficult as the one before. It has now been 6 months that Mom has been in the hospital. Six months that have both flown by and drug on. Part of me is shocked that it’s already been six months but then the other part of me is like “Is this nightmare ever going to end?”. I’ve come to realize that it’s not anytime soon. This is our new reality for the foreseeable future. Once we get Mom out of the hospital, we will have weeks and probably months of Rehab ahead of her. After that, we will start the waiting process for a

heart transplant. The days ahead are overwhelming for all of us, especially Mom. So, for now all we can do is live day to day and focus on the immediate goal ahead. For now, that goal is rehab. 

This week the doctors came in saying they felt Mom was ready to go to rehab. This is a huge win for us and something we are all celebrating. Tomorrow, she will be evaluated by rehab to see if they feel she is ready. Please pray that tomorrow is full of strength for her and that rehab will give us the green light. 

For months we have discussed where Mom will be going for rehab. Having an LVAD throws a huge wrench in choosing a facility. Technically, no rehab facility in Baton Rouge will accept someone with an LVAD as a patient. Our Lady of Lake is considering accepting Mom, though. It would be the biggest blessing to our family to get Mom to Baton Rouge. My Grannie and my Dad are killing themselves making sure Mom is never left alone. Getting Mom in Baton Rouge, would allow more of the family to help and give Grannie and Dad a break. Please pray that the Lord’s will be done in this situation. We absolutely want Mom to have the best care possible, but we also want her closer to home. My prayer is that we can have both.  

Mom is finally starting to seem more like herself. It is obvious to all of us now, that the abdominal surgery she had was a must. It completely changed the way she’s recovering. For the first time in six months, Mom is able to eat and enjoy food without awful stomach pain. We are so thankful that the surgery was successful and complication free. Praise the Lord! 

So many of you have gone above and beyond to bless our family. It never fails, anytime I go anywhere and see someone I know they ask about Mom. It means so much to me that people are still caring and praying. Many of you know that Mom is one of the directors of Central Community Theatre. She, Grannie and my Aunt Karen started the theatre in 2007 and have spent the years since pouring into and loving on every child that walked through that door. Mom adores her CCT kids and, y’all, they adore her. Days before her surgery those kids prayed fiercely over my Mom. I’ve never seen kids pray for someone like these kids did. They truly love their Cookie. After all of Mom’s complications, many of the CCT kids wanted to do something for her and they (with the help of Claire, Aunt Karen and Melissa Beatty) decided to host a Broadway Cabaret Benefit in honor of Mom. Aren’t they precious? The Cabaret will be June 8th and will be held at Abundant Life Church. You can buy tickets at centralcommunitytheatre.org and all of the proceeds will go towards things to help with Mom’s recovery. These kids have worked for weeks on their performance and let me be the first to tell you how amazing they are!! I’ve been shown “sneak peek” videos and these kids are rockstars. Let’s support “Cookie” and give them a packed house. 

We love each one of you so much. Thank you for your prayers and following our story. The Lord’s not done here yet and I can’t wait to continue to share with you the miracles He’s performing. 

Another Giant

Ever since Mom’s latest episode, things haven’t been the same. Between her confusion, stomach pain, anxiety, and everything else.. she has severely struggled. This morning the doctors decided that in order to keep her progress moving forward, they would need to bite the bullet and do exploratory abdominal surgery. So, tomorrow around lunch time Mom will have surgery to try to repair whatever is causing this excruciating stomach pain.

All day I have struggled with this news and asked “Why?” over and over. Why are we faced, yet again, with another serious road block? Why have we had literally every complication in the book plus some? Why is my Mom still in the hospital after 20+ weeks? Why? Why? Why? It’s extremely frustrating to me that my poor Mom is going to be undergoing another serious surgery. The fear I feel is indescribable and overwhelming. The thought of sitting in that surgery waiting room again is sickening. I’m exhausted.. our whole family is exhausted. Today, all I’ve wanted to do is wallow in self pity. I’ve wanted to kick a wall or hit someone. I’ve wanted to lock myself in the closet and scream.. and to be honest, I might do that later tonight. I’ve decided that tonight I will allow myself to be mad and frustrated, but tomorrow I will pull up my big girl pants and face the giant that lies ahead of us. The Lord has been so faithful to us through this experience. My heart knows this and I truly believe that He will continue to be faithful and be right beside us tomorrow helping us defeat the giant.

Tonight I ask all my friends to continue to pray for us. Especially tomorrow while Mom’s in surgery. Please pray specifically for Mom and her surgeons. We are believing for an easy surgery and no complications. We are also believing that this bump in the road is just another chapter in Mom’s testimony. Tonight as I go to bed I’m declaring that tomorrow is going to be another day full miracles. Please join me in declaring that. We love you all and will update you as soon as Mom is out of surgery.

Urgent Prayer Request

This morning I woke up to a phone call from Grannie saying I needed to get up to the hospital. Mom was unresponsive and wouldn’t wake up. 

We aren’t sure what’s going on or what happened. All we know is Mom won’t open her eyes or respond to command. She’s asleep and we can’t get her to wake up. They have done a CT scan of her head and it was clear. One thing that’s for sure, is she didn’t have a stroke. The doctors are working together to try and figure out what’s going on. Her bloodwork looks mostly ok except that her kidneys seems to have taken a “hit” and she is anemic. They have given her 2 units of blood and are working to try and kickstart her kidneys again. It seems the current “guess” on what has happened was her kidneys took a hit from a high heart episode and contrast that was given to her for the CT scan three days ago. The kidneys have slowed and aren’t filtering out the toxins in her blood which is what has caused this sleep state she seems to be in. This is just the doctors guess. They aren’t 100% sure this is what the problem is. On top of all of this, she is still having her stomach issues and that hasn’t been resolved. So for now we are being moved back to ICU and they are changing her medicines around to try and help the kidneys do their job. 

Please pray that this is the answer. Please pray that this problem will be fixed quickly and painlessly. We are all scared and so upset. We have come so far and this is very discouraging to us. Please pray that Mom will wake up soon and we can all hear her voice. We will do our best to update you guys as soon as we know more information. Thank you for loving and praying us through this journey. 

All the Proof You Need

It’s been 20 weeks since I’ve received a phone call from my Mom. Twenty weeks since we’ve chit chatted on the phone about things other than how she feels or what the doctors said. This week that changed. Of course, I still asked how she felt, but for most of the conversation we talked about the kids and what was going on at home. This sort of normalcy is something I once took for granted. I never appreciated those pointless phone calls that I would receive a few times a day to discuss things that didn’t even matter... but for the last 20 weeks all I’ve wanted was to look down at my phone and see “Momma” come across it. This week I got that. It might seem silly or small to some but it’s huge to me.

Mom’s recovery is still moving forward. This week they were able to get rid of the wound vac on her leg. It had started closing and that was one of the things keeping us from moving to rehab. We are so pleased with the progress of that wound.

Over the last few weeks Mom had struggled with stomach issues. She went so long without any sort of food or drink by mouth and getting her “stomach” working correctly again has been a struggle ever since they have allowed her to have food by mouth or peg tube. This week the surgeons found a spot in her small bowel that has caused concern. They aren’t really sure exactly what it is or what has caused it. They believe it’s a partial obstruction of the small bowel. Last Sunday they put her on a 7 day fast to see if it would resolve itself. Last night, they did another CT scan and we were told this morning that there was no change. The surgeons are suppose to be meeting this weekend to discuss what they will do about it. In a normal, healthy patient surgery would have already been done, but they didn’t want to have to put mom through that since she’s such a high risk with all she has going on. Unfortunately, the chance of surgery is high and it looks like that might be our only option. Please pray for the team of doctors as they discuss what the best course of action is to resolve this problem. Please pray the Lord will either completely heal Mom or that He will give the doctors the wisdom they need to fix this problem as easily as possible. We can’t handle anymore setbacks.

This week I have been extremely down thinking about how another holiday is coming up and it will be another holiday without Mom home. Never in a million years would I have thought that we wouldn’t have Mom home for Easter. When they scheduled her surgery for December 6, our goal was to get her home for Christmas. Then after her complications, I hoped to have her home for my birthday on January 27th. When that didn’t happen I prayed and begged to have her home for Eleanor’s birth, and now here we are the end of April and she’s still not home. It’s seems the days are just getting longer and just when we think we are moving to rehab something else surfaces to keep us from getting there. It’s so easy to get discouraged. Recently, I have been able to visit more often because Mom is on a floor that allows me to bring the kids in the room. Mom begs and looks forward to these visits. They make this horrible situation a little more bearable for her and i do my best to make them happen at least once a week.

I recently posted a video of Eleanor laying on Mom’s chest and Mom talking to her as if no one else was in the room. If you haven’t seen the video, I’ve attached it to the bottom of this blog. I’ve watched this video probably 100 times and I cry just as hard every time. Back in December, I spent my days sitting on the floor of room 77 of Ochsners ICU sobbing and grieving the loss of my Mom. Grieving the fact that my Mom would never meet my baby girl. Grieving that I would raise my babies without their Lollie who loved them almost more than I did. I grieved for my sisters who would have to get married without their Momma to help them pick out a wedding dress. I couldn’t ever imagine how I would ever be happy again. My Mom is my best friend and a life without her wasn’t imaginable. It’s not a coincidence to me that the Lord gave me this video around Easter this year. It’s a beautiful reminder of the sacrifice He made for us and that without a shadow of doubt HE IS ALIVE. He sent His son to die on the cross for me, for you and for my Mom. He sacrificed His only son so that my Mom could live. So that she could be healed and so that we could all be healed. Healed from sickness and sin. I pray this Easter that if you don’t know Jesus and what He did for you that you find a place of worship this Sunday and let them pour into you the Love that He has to offer. Yes, Jesus was crucified. He was hung on a cross with nail pierced hands and a crown of thorns on his head. He was spit on, laughed at and made to look like scum of the earth. He was laid to rest in a tomb. BUT 3 short days later He rose from the dead, rolled the stone away and joined His Father in heaven. He did all of this for me and you. He is ALIVE, He is NOT dead and what He’s done in my Mom’s life is all the proof you need.