Another week, another emergency room

This week turned out to be another stop on our emergency room tour.

Starting with the good news. We finally got some insurance stuff straightened out last week, and we received a call to set up an initial “liver screening” appointment at UT Southwestern in Dallas on November 7th. That felt like progress. Becky actually felt pretty decent, all things considered, for a few days after we got home. Then we got a message saying there was a cancellation and we could move our appointment up to Monday, October 30th. Even better.

However … as the week progressed she started feeling weaker. Over the course of the weekend, she started getting chills (more than usual) and feeling bad. As we were getting ready to leave for Dallas Monday morning, her knee was bothering her and she was nauseous. We made it to the appointment, but I had to find a wheelchair for her since she was so weak and her knee was hurting. After talking to the doctor at the screening appointment for 10 or 15 minutes, he made some recommendations.

He felt like we needed to figure out the cause of her shortness of breath and lack of strength. He also wanted to try to accelerate the team’s transplant evaluation process which typically takes weeks to months. He sounded like he was concerned that if we wait for that normal process to take its course, Becky will be in a much worse place - especially given her current MELD score and how quickly things have deteriorated over the past few months.

More testing and a visit with the liver transplant team planned for Tuesday, and a another blog post once we know more.

Do they make pins or something we can start collecting at Emergency Rooms?