If you've wandered upon this site from somewhere else or are a friend of the family who has just found out about Cordelia's health struggles, this is a good place to start...This is the backstory of a little girl named Cordelia Faith who came into the world with some big challenges. But, as the subtitle of the blog mentions, her problems may be big, but we all believe in a God that is WAY bigger...He is sustaining us all on this journey.
On March 15th, 2012, Cliff and Danielle (Dani) Minter, excited new parents, welcomed Cordelia Faith into the world! Danielle's pregnancy had been uneventful and we all celebrated (after many hours of labor!) that Cordelia had finally joined the family.
Over the next couple of weeks everything seemed fine. In retrospect, Dani can now say that she did notice Cordelia's belly seemed bloated pretty regularly and that she was slightly concerned about the color of her stools, but some of that can be completely normal with a new baby so she simply kept trusting the doctors when they said nothing was wrong.
By early May Cliff and Dani were becoming increasingly concerned and at Cordelia's 2 month check up (just before Mother's Day, right around May 11th) they raised their concerns and her doctor agreed to do some tests. They ended up in the hospital that night because her bilirubin levels were so high and have spent more days in hospitals than at home since that day.
By Sunday (Mother's Day) the doctor's were speculating that Cordelia may have Biliary Atresia, a rare liver condition that affects 1/15,000-20,000 babies (click on the Biliary Atresia tab at the top of the page to read more). The entire family looked compulsively at websites trying to garner more information about what this rare disease actually was.
In our research on Biliary Atresia we found that there were two relatively close hospitals that specialized in this rare disease-- Pittsburg Children's and Cincinnati Children's. Both hospitals boast gifted teams, highly educated in liver diseases. Why did they end up choosing Cincinnati? The simple answer is that they prayed about it and Cincinnati got back to them sooner than Pittsburg for whatever reason and they spoke with some great hospital staff members and social workers and just felt that that is where they were being led.
So this past June Cliff and Dani drove as quickly as possible to Cincinnati Children's Hospital where Cordelia, who had been air lifted (for safe, swift travel) awaited them and an almost two month waiting game began...
The hope, initially, was that Cordelia would receive a donated liver through the national liver donation system. There was one close call at the end of July, but one family was ahead of them on the list...so we waited some more.
In the meantime Danielle, Cordelia's mom, underwent extensive testing, scans and blood work to determine the likelihood of her being a match to undergo a "living donor" surgery-- a last resort option in which the Doctor's would take a quarter of her liver, which would eventually regenerate on its own, to give to Cordelia (for whom it will eventually grow into a whole liver!).
As it turned out, Dani was a match but it was determined she also had a number of vascular anomalies-- meaning that the vein networks around her liver were more complicated in their structure and layout than is typical, making the surgery slightly more risky than usual for her.
Eventually, towards the end of July the incredibly capable and wise medical staff in Cincinnati knew they needed to set a deadline for Cordelia's surgery and decided that August 14th was going to be the day. They would wait until that day for a donated liver, but if it didn't come by then they were going to take the portion of Danielle's liver that they needed and give it to Cordelia.
Many of you already know the story from reading it here on the blog...a donated liver never came and so on August 14th Dani and Cordelia underwent more than 15 hours of combined surgery. It was a tense day and many, many prayers surrounded Cliff, Dani and Cordelia.
Those prayers were felt and God's hand was moving. Both surgeries went as well as they possibly could and Dani and Cordelia began their road to recovery.
Within two weeks Cordelia was doing so well in her recovery that she and her parents were discharged from the hospital and moved into a room at the Ronald McDonald House next door. Just this past week (September 25th), Cliff and Dani returned to their home in Buffalo N.Y. to begin a new road of healing and parenting their baby!
On Sunday September 30th a Benefit is being held to help raise money to offset the medical costs of Cordelia's medical journey.
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