Two RED Flags!

Sometimes I feel as though my heart might actually burst right out of my chest. We are now facing not one but two red flags pointing toward rejection of Ashley's new intestine. I hate that word (rejection) as much as I hate the letters TPN. (I hope it is o.k. to hate things?)

1. The first Red flag: Ashleys stoma is prolapsed and the intestine is sluffing off a very large fibrous protein that is covering it. This happened on Sunday afternoon and when I looked in her bag I saw that her intestine was completely white. My heart began to beat so fast as I called in our nurse who removed the ostomy bag and off came the white covering to reveal that all was nice and pink and the blood supply had not been cut off. We all breathed a sigh of relief and assumed that the white covering had come apart from the wafer that holds on the ostomy bag. This is the event that led to my nurse explaining to me all about being a "duck". Today it has just happened again. Only this time as we pulled off the bag some of the covering was still attatched to the inside of the bowel. We quickly called in the surgeon who has explained to me that this is an indicator of rejection. The thing is that all of Ashleys biopsys are showing good healthy cell from the transplanted organ. Tomorrow we will biopsy again and we will continue to do them every few days trying to catch it early. Since we have not identified the source of Ashley's illness we cannot start any more immunosuppresive drugs at this point to fight off the possible rejection.

2. The second RED flag: The amount of output from Ashley's ostomy sight has taken a huge increase since the onset of this last "bug". Too much output of stool is also an indication of rejection. Now we are struggling with both of these "flags" and trying to keep in mind that He is in control of Ashley's life, breath, lungs, infection, transplant, and everything else.

Today I am not able to understand why this road has to be so hard and so long, but I am confident that we will come to the end of this road and be stronger because of the path we have traveled. There are days when I feel like things are spinning out of control and I am afraid today may be one of those. I would surely be a mess if I did not believe that God Himself has ordained this path for us to travel. I am just so thankful He chooses to walk it with me.