The day has finally arrived. Jack took a very antibacterial shower this morning at 5:30. We headed down to surgery prep at 6:30 and talked to many many people about the surgery. He was taken back at 7:30am and the procedure began.

It took about an hour and a half to get him prepped while under anesthesia (there are a lot of ivs and catheters connected to this kid) and we got notification of incision at 9:15.

I told the surgeon I was racing him to see who would win…he said it wasn’t a fair fight unless I waited until incision notification to start jacks blanket. I begrudgingly obliged…see hourly photos of progress below (I took an hour break for lunch) but I was able to complete the blanket by hour 6 of surgery (hour 8 of procedure)…so yea, I won.

We got notification that the pancreas was out by 12:30. Exciting news: they were able to keep the spleen in tact! Jack only lost 3.5 organs instead of 4.5 as anticipated which was just fantastic news. We got to see a picture of his pancreas and duodenum upon removal and this was definitely the right choice. The head was still healthy but the body and tail was necrotized and hardened and shrunken. Proof that he has had many MANY more pancreatitis attacks than we thought. The benefit of that is since the tail had shriveled and hardened it had also moved away from the main artery that it shares with the spleen so they were able to salvage the spleen where they normally cannot without extensive time taken which would ultimately worsen islet chances.

Speaking of islets, since the head was still healthy, the islet team was able to extract almost 250,000 cells! Their goal is a ratio of 5500/kg and jacks was over 7,000/kg. Time will tell if the transplant takes and to what extent, but the team is optimistic.

The transplant was complete around 4pm and we got to talk to the surgeon while Jack was being sewed up. He said it went ‘perfectly’ and he couldn’t have asked for better results. We had so many happy tears.

We finally got to see our guy around 6:30. Let me tell you, the 11 hours apart were the longest hours I’ve experienced as a parent. I ran to his room when we got the all clear to see him. I’d been prepped by multiple families who have gone through the surgery that there would be tubes and monitors everywhere, so while it was jarring, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined these past few months.

now we rest and wait. Today was emotionally the hardest, but the recovery is going to be a long road with many struggles. Jack is tough and I know he will thrive, but it won’t be easy for the next two weeks. He will remain in the ICU for about a week, then he gets to head back to the endocrinology ward. We have been told to try to get as much sleep as possible tonight because the next few nights will be rough. I’m taking that advice and heading to bed. We will see how well we sleep with glucose checks every 15 minutes…