Chloe is a sweet, spunky three year old. Her family attends our church, which is how I met them. This sweet girl has been in and out of the hospital since she was born 3 1/2 years ago with Ultrashort Bowel Syndrome. Here’s a little bit of her journey told by her mom Tricia and the journey her family has been on since then.

“Within 8 hours of delivering, Chloe became deathly sick, had not had a bowel movement and started vomiting bile. After a scan, she was airlifted to the Children’s Hospital to have exploratory surgery. At that point, they discovered she only had 10 cm of small intestine and 30 percent of her large intestine. They placed a central line and feeding tube right away and diagnosed her with Ultrashort Bowel Syndrome. Usually, this only occurs in children born several weeks early. They are not sure how she wasn’t born early or worse. Shortly after her diagnosis, we found out she would never have a normal, healthy life without an intestinal or multivisceral transplant. After 9 weeks in NICU, she came home. However, Chloe has since spent over half her life at Riley’s Children’s Hospital. We have been blessed with amazing doctor’s and nurses and family and friends and church family. We have 3 older boys, too.

Two winters ago she became really sick and with the help with the doctors, we decided it was time to approach transplant. After 5 months of waiting and 4 phone calls where the organ would not work, she had an intestinal transplant on November 6, 2015. Within a few days, she had very bad reactions to one of the anti-rejection meds and had several seizures. By December, we were losing her. Our only option was to take out the organ and pray that it wasn’t God’s turn to have her yet. We finally went home in January with her not walking or talking. She had to learn those things all over again. We are now waiting a multivisceral transplant for 5 organs. We are praying for strength and God’s hands for our whole family. Transplant life is very difficult on everyone.”

Would you join me in prayer for Chloe and her family. Here are a few of my favorites from our session. She gave me a hug afterwards, which just about had me in tears. 🙂