Two Years at Home

It's been a minute since my last post. Actually, it's been a little over 140,000 minutes, but who's counting? I missed making a post on the two year anniversary of Becky's transplant (11/28/23), so this more or less marks two years since she was discharged and we were able to return home from Dallas.

I suppose one of the reasons I haven't been making as many posts recently is that things have  been going fairly smoothly. It's been a reasonably smooth stretch of highway over the last few months.

Our last visit to Dallas was for Becky's two-year checkup with her primary liver doctor. This is the same doctor she saw on that initial "evaluation" visit in October of 2023. All of her most recent liver bloodwork numbers looked good. In fact, they looked so good, the next appointment is in a year!

We did talk a little about Becky's gastro problems which have been the main issue lately. Those that we see in person or get more regular text updates know that we've been making a trip to the local ER ever 6-8 weeks or so with intestinal problems that usually lead to a 2-4 day hospital stay. On the plus side, the most recent ER trip earlier this month was a "false alarm", or maybe Becky just recognized the symptoms early enough that it resolved itself without the usual hospital shenanigans. The liver doctor did have some additional advice on steps she can take to try to avoid the issue in the future. We're still working on it.

Since I'm here, I have a couple more quick updates.

Becky's anemia seems to be better. She's finally being treated for that locally. I didn't go with her to the last appointment, but the bottom line sounded OK. I think there might still be a couple questions about longer term medications and interactions that the doctor at Texas Oncology is working out.

Another plus, we did finally get her referral for osteopenia treatment to Texas Oncology as well. It's been something we've been working on for six months. I'm not sure why in this age of electronic and online everything the simple sending and receiving of a referral between organizations is so difficult. We finally solved the problem by getting a signed hardcopy of the referral from UTSW while we were in Dallas. Becky took that to her appointment at Texas Oncology and got her first treatment that day. Paperwork!

Overall, a little two years post transplant and things feel mostly normal. Becky has a few things she’s dealing with, but most of them are not really related to the transplants. Those seem to be doing fine.

As always, we are thankful for those that helped us through this journey, no matter what form that help took. We’re grateful for every year and hope to ring in many more together.

Happy 2026!