Catching Up Part 1

I decided it’s time to write another blog post to update family, and friends and others on my progress if you have not heard already.

Since early March, I have been living in Nashville about a mile and a half from my doctors at Vanderbilt Hospital. I did this for a lot of reasons, but mainly I hoped that if there was ever a situation where they needed a transplant recipient quickly that I might be able to be that person. What I didn’t know was moving to Nashville would be followed by months of the worst pain, the most dehumanizing times, and some extremely scary moments where I was closer to crossing over than seeing the light. From January 1 to the middle of May, I spent roughly 90 night nights in the hospital. The longest stent being almost a month  while the entire liver team, kidney team, infectious disease, and back surgery team tried to find a way to find and eliminate this mysterious infection that was literally killing me. That period was when I experienced some of the lowest times of process, doctors and nurses and hazmat suits and them openly telling me this is scary because they didn’t know what it was and they couldn’t find it. As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into throwing things at the wall to see if anything sticks, a doctor inside the infectious disease department at Vanderbilt had a really good idea of what it was and how to treat it but was not 100% sure that this was the issue. However, she was confident enough that her math and her expertise had a better chance than not of being correct and ultimately being able to treat it and eliminate it.Thank God, she was bold enough to say it, and put it into action because exactly what she thought it was is what it turned out to be. In seven days after switching antibiotics and a couple other tweaks to my treatment, the infection was gone, and we could move towards the hopes of getting a transplant.

After we fixed and killed the bacteria that led to the infection, all eyes were on getting fully listed for a transplant again and once that happened, it was a waiting game. Waiting to get the call that would save my life, the call from Vanderbilt saying we have a possible liver match. During all of this time I was gaining and losing fluid depending on medication‘s, which included steroids, diuretics, antibiotics and a whole lot more drugs that were prescribed to me to battle my failing liver. I at one point was taking 31 different medicines each day twice a day. They got to the point where I didn’t know if the medicine was helping or actually hurting me. I balloon up to 292 pounds and got as low as 178 pounds. At one point I lost 100 pounds in three weeks time.

 While waiting in my short-term rental apartment in Nashville and after I was cleared to go home from the hospital I got the call. It was at 1:30 AM and I answered and they said “can you be here soon? We think we have a liver for you.” So I  wake up my mom in the next room like a crazy person and tell her “we gotta go we gotta go they gotta liver!” When we arrive at the hospital, the doctors tell me that the situation is a little different, I am what’s called the back up. What the backup means is that they have someone else who’s ready and ahead of me to receive the liver. They told me that it is not 100% sure that this will be a match with the person ahead of me and that there is around a 50% chance that person won’t qualify for it. They just have to run some tests to see. I was completely OK with that scenario. After 12 hours in a hospital room with no food or water because of a possible upcoming surgery, I waited and waited for the doctor to come in and tell me - that the recipient ahead of me was a match and that I could go home. Bummer.

So as you can imagine, my emotions and brain are in a complete blender over what happened the last 24 hours. However, I thought - well at least I know what that feeling is like and that I can handle it if and when the next time that call comes. Sure enough four days later at 3:30 PM on Cinco de Mayo I got another call and this time I wasn’t on deck I was up at the plate. Me and my dad got to the hospital in four minutes. I didn’t have shoes. I barely had a shirt on and we were ready to roll. This particular liver needed a new home within three hours and that’s why there was such a rush. So from getting the call at 3:30 I was on the operating table getting pumped full of anesthesia crying out “LFG!!!!” (Apparently) at 4:30.

I woke up in a haze at about noon the next day and my mom and dad were standing over me as well as doctors and nurses and they said that the surgery could not have gone better and I have an incredible liver that is beginning to work. I started crying and screaming tears of joy, forgetting that I had a hospital gown on and was giving everyone in the room a free show. After eight months, I finally had a new liver. It’s over, I’m going home , I did it! In the words of the great Lee Corso “ not so fast, my friend”.

Part 2 to follow

Song of the day:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QJHpeuX0nXo&si=ksHracgL7DIG7yHj

Kevin