Little Lauren.Org

Back on March 2nd 2012, Lauren had a very major surgery to fix her leaking pancreatic duct and resulting cyst (caused by her tumor surgery in Nov 2011). This surgery provided an alternate path for cyst to drain into her duodenum like it would for a normal person. She also had her gallbladder and appendix removed. We are happy to say that as of today, that surgery appears to be a sucess. Lauren is now able to eat and drink normally (she went 4 months without being able to eat or drink). This would not have been possible if it werent for the hard work, dedication, expertise and many other things of her wonderful surgeon, Chris Weldon. We can't say enough good things about him.

On April 6th, 2012, Lauren was discharged from Childrens Hospital Boston. She spent the weekend locally in Boston with her family and was able to visit an aquarium and musem. This was a huge step.Lauren had been hospitalized all but 3 days since Nov 21, 2011.

On April 9th, after follow-ups at the hospital, lauren was allowed to leave Boston for home. She has been home for several weeks now and has recovered well. She is even back at school now. We think back as to how much of a fighter Lauren is and it is amazing. Here is a little girl who had a huge, intense surgery March 2nd, went downhill the day after surgery (she was at risk of dying) and yet 5 weeks later she is walking out the door of the hospital. Thats just amazing.

In November 2011 during a routine follow-up in Boston, Alicia had requested an MRI scan of Lauren. We had read recently of other OMS families who had tumors found a couple years after OMS onset, and since we never really new the cause of Lanrens OMS we were suspicious and Alicia requested it. The scan did turn up a tumor.

On November 21, 2011 we had the tumor removed at Arnold palmer Hospital in Orlando. The surgury took over 4 hours as the location of her tumor was very difficult to access. After surgery lauren went on to recover for the next week in the hospital, then went home.

After being home for 3 days, Laurens pain continued to get worse and worse and she had a high fever. On November 30th she was taken back to the ER at Arnold Palmer and admitted. She was diagnosed with pancreatitus and also had a pseucyst that was filled with fluid. The cause was when removing the tumor, it was attached to part of the pancrea and some tissue from the pancrea had to be removed.

Pancreatitus in children is not very common. The course of treatment for her was basically a wait-and-see approach to see if it healed itself. This did not happen and eventually enough fluid built up that they were able to install a drain into a fluid pocket. This helped, but did not resolve the problem. After 3 more weeks of wait-and-see, we decided to transfer Lauren to a specialist at Childrens Hospital Boston. 

Lauren arrived at Childrens Hospital Boston on January 3rd. They have been very agressive in trying to get her treated. They are hopeful to perform a procedure soon to install a stent in her pancreatic duct, however they first had to install a drain in her pseudocyst so it will drain and be out of the way. At this time, we are hoping this procedure can be done on Friday January 13th.