On Tuesday, February 7th, Liviah had her first annual ultrasound and liver follow-up appointments. We were undoubtably excited to get to the hospital and see how amazing her liver, Teddi, was doing, for after all, it’s given her a 2nd chance at life! Her ultrasound was first, and after that, we had her appointment with her liver team. Here she is excited to check on Teddi:

“Something was found on the ultrasound” were the last words that we expected to hear at her next appointment. The wind was taken from my lungs, the fear swept over my body, and was probably clear as day on my face. I personally, wanted to scream and cry all at the same time because I was quite honestly enraged- why does this keep happening to Liviah, an innocent 5-year-old girl? I instead said a few choice words (Liviah was out of the room before the news was broken to us), and I do remember suggesting a scream room, or a room where parents can break things and go crazy when they’re presented with awful news about their children… after that, it was questions like “do we know what it is?”, “what are our next steps?”, “best/worst case scenarios…”, etc.

What we knew from the ultrasound was that it was a mass on the right lobe of Teddi. We knew we needed to break the news to Liviah, who was upset as well, rightly so. We just keep doing our best to pour into our amazing little girl to help her get through these extremely difficult, infuriating, scary situations, while also trying to show gratitude for everything God has given us.

The next steps we took were to get testing done as quickly as possible to seee what we were dealing with. Before we left the hospital, we were able to get in a chest X-ray, and Liviah got a blood draw (with LOTS of labs), AND was able to stay still enough for an MRI of her abdomen!
Below is Dr./Nurse Liviah all dressed in her scrubs. She had just gotten her blood draw and was getting prepared for her MRI. Girlfriend did pretty well staying still for her MRI, which took a 1+ hour.

After an unexpected whole day at the hospital we headed home to have cupcakes for dinner, and enjoy the company of each other. Here’s Liviah on the way home, being her beautiul, joyous self.

The next day we were scheduled for a PET/CT Scan. Liviah got another IV and did well for her scan. Test results popped up throughout the day, with still no definitive answer as to what the mass on her liver was, and on Thursday morning we headed to the hospital for her biopsy, which she was most afraid for. Here she is getting comfy in the waiting area, but we weren’t waiting for long before the anesthia team was taking good care of our girl.

Liviah got 2 biopsies from the mass (on her right side), and 1 from her regular liver tissue.

After Liviah’s biopsy she had to lay flat for 6 hours, which was the hardest part for her. We had to stay the night at the hospital, and Liviah had a bit of pain from her biopsy, Her pain didn’t stop her from requesting tacos and queso from Condado, nor getting down to the playroom before they closed for the night.

That night, she seemed to sleep pretty well, I could tell because I was up all night tossing and turning, and praying, praying, praying for good news from her biopsy. The next morning at rounds, there weren’t any answers yet, but we were getting discharged! We hit up the playroom one more time, and then had lunch in the cafeteria. Liviah clearly enjoyed herself while eating a giant piece of pizza before heading home.

We were hoping for answers before the weekend, but not counting on anything until the beginning of next week. Before getting Jaxson off the bus, we heard from Liviah’s doctor and even though the pathologists have more stains to do, going into the weekend, things aren’t pointing to a cancerous looking tumor. PRAISE THE LORD!

We are going to continue to pray like crazy for this mass to be benign and just a part of Teddi, and to get answers as to why it grew, because there IS power in prayer. We have been on quite a journey with Liviah and liver related things, but continue to do our best to have Faith and to put our Trust in the Lord.

If you know Liviah and her story, we appreciate continued prayers, if you stumbled across this story, we always welcome prayers for our sweet girl. There’s a purpose in all of this, we may not know what all of it is, but we hope that it encourages all of us to get closer to God.