We’re back on the list … in fact, two lists

Well, here we are again - sort of. If you’ve been following along, you know that we’ve been in kind of a holding pattern for the last few days. And if you haven’t been following along, why not? Aren’t my ramblings more interesting than The Amazing Race or The Bachelor? Maybe not.

So where exactly are we? Let’s start with a short recap. We arrived in Dallas on October 30th for an initial screening by the liver team at UT Southwestern. They immediately sent Becky to the Emergency Room, and she was quickly admitted to the hospital and an express evaluation for a liver transplant began. By Friday, November 3rd, Becky was placed on the national liver transplant list. After being on the liver transplant list for about a week, kidney issues resulted in a short pause. Becky’s transplant status was changed to Inactive while waiting to be approved for an SLK (Simultaneous Liver and Kidney) transplant. That approval came today as did insurance authorization, and Becky is now active on the transplant list again and we begin the wait for a matching donor for both organs. That’s a lot in two weeks!

That’s the good news. It hasn’t been without some trials over the last several days.

• Becky had a feeding tube placed a few days ago and that’s been an adjustment for her system.

• She had a PICC line placed in her arm a couple days ago. The good news is that replaced a line that was in her neck. The bad news is that it appears it was initially inserted a little too far (too close to her heart) and was causing some brief V-tach (arrhythmia) events. Fortunately, it looks like that was corrected last night and no additional events have been detected since.

• Becky is tired of the hospital, tired of waiting, and just plain tired. This has started causing some ICU delirium. The symptoms are similar to the encephalopathy she had been experiencing, but this is just a result of the situation, not the increased ammonia levels she was dealing with as a result of her non-functioning liver. We’re praying that a matching donor is located sooner rather than later so that condition doesn’t worsen.

• She has been getting up to sit in a chair or take short walks on most days including today. That’s a good thing because staying active will make recovery easier. The word this morning was that transplant patients can typically expect three days of rehab/recovery for each day of waiting in the hospital. That puts us at about six weeks of recovery so far which is starting to reduce the chances of being home for Christmas.

And so we start waiting again … this time for two organs.

Stay tuned!