Lily, Part V

I don't remember exactly when Lily's plight became so close to my heart. To tell the truth, most of our kids don't die. Definitely not within the first year of therapy, and that's all the longer I'd been working at the Children's Hospital; the thought of losing this precious girl, soon, had been weighing on my heart since the fungus was diagnosed. 

But the realization that she might die that day had suddenly come too close for comfort. 

Please, Lord. Save Lily's life. Save her life. Please save her life.  Over and over and over.

Dr. Rooms and I had made an arrangement- she was going down to the OR to watch the surgery and would text me to come down when they opened Lily's chest. After all, even for those of us who work on the oncology unit- this was something really unusual. We all wanted a first row seat. 

Lily's thoracotomy did not disappoint. The surgeons had decided that a sternotomy was too risky, and didn't think she could survive it. They wanted to do the surgery laproscopically, but there were just too many fungus balls. And so they decided to open up each side of her chest separately. 

Two thoracotomies. Ouch. 

Dr. Room's text came just as I was finishing a few things on the floor; it was a picture text. Of the first fungus ball. I raced down to the OR and threw on some paper scrubs over my clothes. Entering the OR, I was greeted by the sight of a room filled with people, all surrounding the table where Lily's body lay carefully positioned, her left lung visible through the gaping hole made by the rib spreader. 

(Rib spreader.)

The surgeon reached his hands in and began cutting away at something. Looking over at the instrument table, I saw several little pink and black chunks sitting, waiting to go to pathology. 

"They're almost done!" Dr. Rooms exclaimed as I walked in. 

"But you just texted... I thought they were doing both sides?"

"She's losing too much blood. They're giving her more but she's not very stable; definitely not enough to open the right side. They're going to send her to the ICU for the weekend and try to finish the other side with the laparoscope on Monday."

That's right; it was Friday. Friday when the surgeons nearly killed her, trying to save her life. Friday that she went to the ICU for the second time. Friday that she survived her first thoracotomy. 

Lily, we realized at this point, was not going to give up without a fight. 

And the true fighter that lived within her was only beginning to arise.