Prayers for Samantha Wilson

Hello,

Below you'll find a copy of an e-mail I received from Lucy LePage. Apparently her daughter Samantha Wilson (a parisioner and Freshman at Helias) has been in a lot of pain for quite some time now. As you can read in the message, she'll be receiving treatment for that very soon. I would ask that you pray for her that this procedure takes care of the pain.

If you would like, you can click here and go to the website for the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. By going to that website, you can have priests from around the world praying for Samantha in their daily Masses. She will certainly be in our prayers.

Here is the message from her mother:

Hi all...just wanted to give you an update on Samantha.

She will be admitted into MO Baptist Hospital on Monday and they will be doing an ERCP. I'm not sure what this stands for and if I told you, you wouldn't understand it either, but here's the scoop:

In our search for curing her continued pain we found ourselves sitting in a waiting room full of people from all over the world yesterday (Indiana, Hawaii, South Carolina). Everyone of them with very similar situations...often being told that it might be their gall bladder, might be in their head, might be stress etc. etc. Only to find themselves at Dr. Aliperti's office in St. Louis, MO. Dr. Aliperti specializes in the ERCP, a procedure for a condition called "sphincter of Oddi." The tract to the gall bladder has a tract to the pancreas. At the opening of this tract (the sphincter), scar tissue forms. The ERCP is the procedure he will do that cuts out the scar tissue and then he will put stints in to hold it open. After a few days he will go back in and take the stints out. They have no idea why scar tissue forms but 75% of the time this is the cure for the pain. The procedure has risks and the bad news for Samantha is that because she is so young, the odds of recurrence (2 to 20 years) are very high but at least she will know where to go for help.

Dr. Aliperti got called for an emergency surgery while we waited with 15 others. So for about 3 hours a small support group formed right before our eyes. As always, Samantha's admirer's grew. Every person in that room was over 50 except for her. They all took a liking to her and I watched God's magic go to work. You could see her give hope and encouragement to some very sick people as she shared her history and offered prayers to all. (Her e-mail buddy list grew!)

We decided to stay the weekend and because I have the best boss in the whole world...we have a place to rest in Chesterfield. We are going to swim today and probably tomorrow. She will have to start a special diet at noon tomorrow and then to the hospital bright and early on Monday.

She will be in the hospital at least 3 days but no longer than a week (hopefully). She has a 5-6 week recovery time. Hopefully we won't have to drive up to St. Louis again until she turns 15 and has her permit (August 8th)...lordy lordy...

Samantha was encouraged yesterday to learn that there was a solution. She had resorted to living with pain and thought the docs were all nuts. She was ready to go yesterday. She said, "I wish we were going to the hospital now." She is a brave little soul - it's taking it's toll on me but if she can handle it...I can too!

Thank you for your continued prayers of healing and strength.

-Lucy LePage