Praying for Grace and Martin

By: Sara

Last week a surgeon who specialized in hands came to Shell to work for a few days at the HCJB missions hospital. While he was here he was able to do surgery on the hands of two of the kids at Casa de Fe.

Martin was born with some paralysis and short tendons that limited his movements. An earlier surgery allowed him to learn to walk, and this surgery was to move a tendon that was keeping his wrist in a bent position. The surgery went well and will hopefully allow him to fully straighten his wrist and use his hand properly. He will get his bandages off in a few days.

Grace was the other little one who got hand surgery. She was born with some paralysis and she has a several fingers that are either missing or malformed. She had surgery to take one of her fingers that she was not able to use and attach it in place of her missing thumb. The hope was that she would be able to use her new thumb to clasp objects and hold them more easily.

However, her surgery did not go as well as planed. There were some complications and after the super long surgery, the doctor was not very hopeful that the new thumb would take.

A few days later the doctor checked and concluded that the new thumb would indeed need to be removed because the blood was not circulating correctly. An appointment was scheduled for the second surgery. However, at the appointment as the surgeon took off the bandages in the operating room he was surprised to see that the finger had improved. He said that we should wait until Monday, tomorrow, and at that time decide whether or not she will be able to keep her thumb.

Grace’s appointment is tomorrow at 11am Central Time. Please pray that even now God is knitting together all of the vessels and arteries and that everything is working correctly. Pray that when the bandages are removed the doctor will find a fully healthy thumb and that Grace will not have to go through the ordeal of surgery again.