["prima"Donna]

Hey everyone!!!

I just saw on Mike's facebook wall that his sister just posted that the transplant surgery was successful and went as expected...

However, the next 7 days are very critical, for so many reasons, so please continue to pray with me if you don't mind, because Mike is not out of the woods yet...she also said that Mike thanks all of us for our prayers and support...

I know when he had the first surgery in July to save his life, it was quite a few weeks before he was strong enough to speak to me on the phone, or go on the computer to send fb and email updates...

This has been a very long, tough, painful road for my old buddy Mike, up to this point...

I will say this on Mike's behalf....if anyone is considering gastric by-pass surgery, please think long and hard before you take the plunge...he had it done 4 years ago and has been very sick ever since...

Last year he had to have emergency surgery only a week or two after Keith and I saw him when we took delivery of the Camaro...his small intestines had become twisted, as a side effect of the surgery...he has had trouble eating ever since the by-pass and suffered with many excruiating attacks...

This July, when I posted that I needed your prayers for Mike, it was because he came 'inches away' from dying...his small intestines had twisted again so badly that he ended up with a blockage that caused his intestines to develop gangrene and he also developed sepsis, which is almost always fatal...

He ended up having his entire small intestines removed, just to save his life...he has been on an IV feeding bag called TPN, for those of you with medical knowledge...he also ended up with a colostomy bag...he wished that he had died, he was in such bad shape after the surgery...he had lost so much weight that he was too weak to talk...

Soooo, he became a candidate for a small intestine transplant...the transplant surgeon wanted to first un-do the stomach by-pass and put his stomach back to the way it was before the gastric by-pass...then the surgeon wanted to wait 4-5 months to let that heal before putting him on the transplant list...

The insurance company refused to pay for the two separate surgeries because his insurance didn't have a 'gastric by-pass rider' on it, so they wouldn't cover any and all complications related to the by-pass...

The surgeon's transplant team wrote a letter saying that he needed the transplant to SAVE HIS LIFE, because he could not sustain life with the TPN (IV feeding bag)...thankfully, the surgery was approved, however, he had to have both surgeries at the same time...very dangerous, and very risky, but considering the alternative (death), Mike was willing to give it a try...

A small intestine became available yesterday, and last night he had the transplant and stomach surgery that was expected to take 12+ hrs or more...he will eventually be able to get rid of the TPN IV feeding bag and the colostomy bag and be normal again!!!...

Let's hope he comes out of this alive and well and able to eat AND drink again like a normal person...he will need to take anti-rejection drugs and be monitored for the rest of his life, but Mike is a fighter, so I think (and hope and pray) that he makes it...

Thanks for all of your love and prayers and support for someone you never met, just because I asked...

You guys are the best!!!!...

Love and hugs to all of you...please keep on praying with me that I will soon get to speak to Mike, and hopefully get to Virginia next year to see him in person and give him a big hug from my Camaro5 family!...