Liver transplant

The Miracle of liver transplant

This report is in 2 phases. The first is the general description of how things went.
The second is snippets of things in more detail.

PART ONE

It started in 2005. I was told by a liver doctor that I had end stage Cirrhosis of the liver. He knew just by looking at my bloated body. He contacted a liver doctor at UCLA in Los Angles. The prognosis was poor. The only help for me was a liver transplant. Eventually I got screened and accepted for the liver transplant program at UCLA. There is a national list for donated livers, but since livers are very hard to come by, most of them stay in their own region. There is also a scoring system, determined by blood study, of who is the sickest. The highest is 40 plus and it's called the MELD score. This was put in place to keep favored people and movie/TV stars from getting livers by buying them, ahead of the sickest ordinary people.

Some of the symptoms of cirrhosis are:
You are always cold.
Your body itches like crazy, driving you to look for relief any where you can.
You begin to accumulate body fluids that fall out of the liver into the body cavity.
As the liver is no longer working correctly, you can get too much ammonia in your blood and in your brain. This can lead to a giant brain fog. You no longer know who or where you are.
If you are gotten to a hospital they are usually able to bring you back though it may take a few days. Without medical help, you fall into a coma and die.

My meld score had settled down to around 20 so I wasn't sick enough to qualify for a transplant yet. However, the accumulating body fluids was a problem. It made me swell up and put pressure on other organs of the body. There is a procedure that drains the excess body fluids from you. It is called Paracentises. They clean a small area on the right side of your belly and a doctor gives you a local and then takes a tool and snips a small hole. He then inserts the drain tube. It's thin and curled and about 18 inches of it goes inside you. The tech puts the other end in a liter size bottle, which is slightly evacuated, it has a vacuum, and it pulls the fluid out. After 30-45 minutes your empty and the tube is pulled out. Then I would be wheeled back upstairs to admitting and get 100 milli-liters of Albumin, which is a substance that helps strengthen the artery walls and help then to not leak fluids.
In my first draining they took as much as 13 liters from me. Later it settled to 6 -8 liters, 8 liters = 2.1 gallons, and I had to have this done every week, for a year. I eventually got a couple of diet pills and the swelling stopped, to be flushed down the toilet.
At this point I was well enough to go to work as a contractor, when work was available.
I had retired but needed something to wile away the hours at home doing nothing.

In early 2008 a yearly stress test at UCLA revealed an anomaly in my heart. While they
said it could be just a shadow, they needed to check it out anyway.
So I had a Coronary Angiogram. They found an artery going to my heart was 70% blocked.
We discussed various options, like a stent, and medicine only, but I was off the liver list until
this was taken care of. I finally opted for the surgery--a coronary bypass.

On March 24th 2008 I had to be at UCLA hospital at 5 AM. So we, my wife and I, were there
at 5:00 AM. After some paperwork we went down to the basement where pre-op is and where the surgical suites are. We were taken to a bed, with curtains all around, and I was told to
get naked, which I did. About 2 PM I was taken into surgery.

I woke up in an ICU unit. There were lots of tubes hanging from my body.
I suppose it took a few days for me to really be with it and aware of the world.
The nurses in the ICU were absolutely great. I was even singing songs to them, though
I can imagine how bad it must have been. I decided that I would make a CD tribute to
the nurses and staff of UCLA.
After a few days I was taken to a 4 person room in the cardiac wing and left there to heal.
My wife and family were there and gave me great support while I was recovering.

10 weeks after the operation, it's a little hard to duplicate the feelings I had during my time at UCLA, but I will try.
There was not a lot of pain associated with the opening of my chest and doing an artery graft. I recall more the strangeness of laying in bed for days and days. I had a bunch of tubes leading
into my body and places in my arms for IV"s. I had other sites on either side of my neck for IV's
and one for dialyses. They came every morning about 5:00 AM to draw blood and each day they came with a portable X-ray machine to take pictures of my chest . They also came every hour to poke my finger and check my sugar levels. Also they would check my vital signs a few times a day.

I slept a lot and was drowsy during most of the time I was awake. The time dragged on and eventually I was nearly convinced I would never get out of the hospital and never see my home and family and friends again. In short, I was ready to die. Some of the nurses were pretty good, but some were not so. A couple of times I had to lay there in my own poop for a couple of hours until I was cleaned up. Also the enema's were no fun either. They would make me roll over on my side, and that was not easy to do. I had to hang on the side rails of the bed. It was not comfortable. Finally, I wanted the Lord to take me home. I pleaded. I begged. All to no avail. I even told my wife I wanted to die. I meant it. However, it was to no avail, and I finally accepted that I'd have to lay there, tho I was still convinced I would never see home again.

There were 4 people in this room but I couldn't see anyone else. A fellow next to me, behind the curtain, was trying to walk and fell down. One of the nurses tried to catch him and they both fell in a heap. Suddenly there were 4 or 5 people around him, trying to make sure he wasn't hurt. As it was, he was OK. The truly bright side of the day was when my wife visited, and the kids as well. She stayed with me through most of the day and that would continue until I eventually was released.

I was in the cardiac unit and after several days I guess they decided I was OK to be moved.
They moved me to the liver transplant floor. I didn't know it at the time, but my feeble liver was
going down the tubes. Too much stress from the heart operation was doing it in.

I was moved to another floor, to the liver ICU. It was the first of many two person rooms I
was in. I didn't realize it, but a nurse told me they had over 50 beds for liver patients. The nurses were excellent and took great care of me. One problem I had was always being thirsty. In the beginning, after the first operation I could drink no water. All I could have was a small sponge on a stick that was filled with water. Oh how I begged for water and more of those sponge sticks.

During my time I was in at least 4 different rooms and at least 4 different floors. The rooms were all two person rooms and my room mates were generally pleasant, save one person, who was asked by my wife to turn down his TV. He and the people with him got huffy and the next day he was gone. Bye bye.

After a few days I was moved to the 6th floor. It wasn't a room per se, but again curtains blocked
the view of other patients. By this time I was OK to drink some water and I took full advantage of that, tho it never really quenched my thirst.

Several doctors would visit me every day, some heart doctors and some liver doctors and some kidney doctors, all asking me how I was and using their stethoscopes to check me out. I was feeling pretty good and waiting till I got better. On a Saturday, April 5th, my co-ordinator looked at my lab work and calculated my meld score was 39. I didn't know that at the time but it set off a bunch of bells and whistles. My liver was practically dead, as I would be in a couple of days if I did not get a liver transplant.

The next day, Sunday early, a nurse came in and said, "Congratulations, I hear you are getting a liver today." That was news to me. No one had said anything to me. Several other nurses came by to wish me well. I shrugged my shoulders. I'll believe it when it happens. My wife came in and hardly had a chance to turn around, when a doctor came in and said, "We have a line on a liver and if it turns out to be a viable one, we will do the transplant today." Shock all around from me and her. Just 13 days from my open heart surgery, and I was going to get a liver. While I was waiting I was taken for dialysis. They had a site in my neck to attach to, and I laid there for about 3 hours. There was no pain, just more boredom.

The doctors were in and out. They had to go somewhere in the valley to check out this liver, but they described it as pristine. A real good one. From a 30 something jogger who was hit by a car and killed. We waited about 4 hours and finally we got the word. In an hour at 4 pm I would be taken to the operating room. It was still hard to believe, and we talked of how this had to be a miracle.

At 4 pm I was taken down to the basement. Several doctors stopped by and introduced themselves and told me what their speciality was. My wife expressed her concern and they said they would take great care of me. They mentioned a breathing tube but I had no idea what that was. In the operating room I had a sterile field blanket put on me. There were several people in the room and I recall it was cold. They gave me a shot and put a mask over my face, neither of which seemed to do anything. Finally one of the doctors repositioned the mask and said,
"Breathe deeply."

When I woke up, I was in an awkward position and I couldn't move. My hands were tied to the bed, and the natural reaction was to get free. In the beginning, being all doped up, I could hear people talking but couldn't exactly make out what they were saying. It almost seemed they were
talking about me being fodder for a sandwich. That made no sense, yet..... I spent several fruitless minutes trying to get free, but I had to stop when my muscles got sore. And, I had something stuck in my throat and I couldn't breathe very well. Again, my natural reaction was to grab this thing (I couldn't) and yank it out so I could breathe. As it turned out, the only reason I could breathe was by the tube stuck in my throat. It took a couple of days for me to realize this, that my hands were tied to the bed to keep me from tearing the tube out and sentencing myself to asphyxiation. Finally two people came over. They flipped me, somehow, on the bed. I felt like I was going head over heels. My eyes were closed at that time so I didn't see what happened.

Eventually I came around better. The nurse came and told me not to think about pulling the
tube out, though she never told me why. My wife and daughter came and it was very frustrating
not to be able to talk to them. We tried a few hand signals and some of them worked, but we needed something better. I made signals that they finally understood, and they took a piece of paper and wrote the alphabet on it. Now I could point to letters and spell out words. It was confusing at first but as time went on it got better. My younger son came up with using a qwerty, like a keyboard, to make it easier, as well as some big circles with words in like yes, no and water. After a few days the breathing tube was removed from my mouth.
Ah, I could breathe again, sorta. They had a plastic device that you had to put your mouth on and suck, 10 times, every hour. Why? I hadn't used my lungs for a while. I guess they have a machine to breathe you during the operation. In addition, they said one lung was collapsed to gain access to the liver.

I don't remember how long I was where I was, but after a few days I was moved to an ICU on another floor. What followed seemed like endless days laying around. A blood draw around 5 AM, hourly tests for diabetes (which I have), an endless group of pills given to me to take, and a portable X-ray almost every day. It was made more passable by my wife and kids visiting nearly every day. There were two nurses assigned to every room, one registered and one Pn. They were pretty much there all the time and showed an amazing bit of love and encouragement. They were so good I promised them I would make a tribute CD for them. We delivered the CD's June 17th 08.

I had been split down the chest for the heart operation, and across the top of the belly for the transplant. My chest was healed up, tho it still had a bandage running down it. My belly was held together by staples. It looked like a railroad switching yard. In the beginning my body hurt every time I moved, but as they promised, the more I moved around the less it hurt. There was an exercise teacher that came by, even after the heart surgery, to give me what exercises I could do while laying in bed. Every day when he showed up I'd say, "Here's Sargent Joe." He did a wonderful job and we became friends.

Beside healing, another prerequisite for getting out and going home was to be able to walk, using a walker, about 80 yards. After four weeks in the hospital my muscle mass had been severely
depleted. I had lost 30 pounds. I could not even sit up by myself, let alone walk. A nurse would have to grab my arm, and with the other arm around my back, lift me to a sitting position. In the event I had to be moved out of bed to a chair, they called 'the lift team'. This was usually two big, burley guys. They had black shirts that had the lift team logo on them. I had never heard of such a thing before but they too, were a blessing. They would get there arms around me and lift me up to a standing position which I could manage, turn me around and set me back down. It's
difficult to describe the feeling in your legs when there is not much muscle there and you try to stand. It's an unpleasant sensation, and they seem to shake a little too.

Eventually as time went on I could stand and turn myself around. The walking came next. A physical therapist would come by bringing a walker with her and we started by my getting comfortable with it, then walking a few paces. In the end I was walking far more than was
required, but I was determined to get it. The therapist would walk with me, holding my gown.
She was a rather short person. I told her that if I went over she wouldn't be able to stop me, I was too big at 6 feet and 150 lbs. We would both go down in a heap. Fortunately it never happened.

About 10 days after the transplant, the doctors came in and started talking about releasing me. It was, "We'll seehow a particular function tests, and if it's in the correct range, you can leave." Naturally it wasn't and I'd have to wait another day.

Finally, 15 days after my transplant, though it seemed far longer, I went home.

I walked at home using the walker and it worked well, if slow. It was great to be home. They had said that usually a patient ends up back in the hospital at least once during the first year. Not me, I said to myself. The first couple of days I did pretty well, but then noticed my nose was a little runny. They had warned me that anytime I have a fever, if it reaches 100.5, it's time to go back to the hospital. On Sunday morning, 5 days after I came home, I felt bad. My temperature was 100.4. In the bathroom, I fell over backwards. As soon as I shifted my weight toward my back, everything just collapsed and down I went. After much struggling, my wife got me up. 3 minutes later, still in the bathroom, I fell over again. This time my wife had to call a son to come over. They finally got on the bed, but I had to throw up several times. My wife brought the wheelchair, which I never used. They got me into it. She called UCLA and they said
bring him down. Off we went.

I barfed again in the emergency room, but they gave me some medicine to help stop it and it did.
After being taken to a room, I was transferred to a liver ICU again. They ran tests and gave me antibiotics but never could isolate my problem. After 8 days I was somewhat better and they let me go home again. After 2 months I have not gone back to the hospital.

PART TWO

The Angiogram
In an angiogram they shave your pubes and make an incision on the inside of your leg. Then they put a tube in your leg and push it up the artery and into your heart. It has a camera on the end of it and some kind of thin probe. I was awake and alert and they just put a local in my leg. I could sort of see a monitor off to my left and though I couldn't tell much about what I was seeing, I did see the thin probe moving around. It took about a half hour and I was done. They put bandages and a clamp at the incision. The clamp went around my hips and held the bandage in place. As this was an artery it's critical it heals quickly and doesn't leak, leading to loss of blood.

I had to lay absolutely still for 7 hours. No movement of my legs at all. I could move my arms
but it had to be smoothly. At first it was OK, but after 4-5 hours it was no longer fun. The clamp was beginning to be uncomfortable and my nerves and muscles wanted to move around. A doctor came around and said everything was OK, but that wasn't to be. Finally, at 8 PM they let me up. I walked with a limp as my leg was sore. After two days I could walk normally again.

When they had a good look at the results, they found an artery on the outside of my heart was 70% blocked. No good. Over the next few weeks we went over options with the doctor. The first was do nothing and take medicine. It wouldn't lesson the block but would keep it from getting worse.
If I hadn't had a bad liver at the time, the doctor said he might consider it.
The second option was a stent in the artery. One kind had a medicinal coating around it. That one I could not have because of my liver. The second kind was bare. I would have to take blood thinners, maybe forever. And there was a chance of it slipping out of place some time down the road and causing problems, even a heart attack.
The third option was surgery. Open the chest and take a blood vessel from the chest wall and graft it to the damaged blood vessel.

After consideration, it seem the only way to go was the real deal. Chop, chop. So we said, "let's go for the graft." Fortunately, it went well as far as I knew. My wife later said the doctors were afraid I might die.

Pooping.
This may be a little uncomfortable to talk about, but it's part of life and doesn't stop just because your lying in bed. I had various things attached to my butt, most of them went down a tube to a collection box on the floor. There were a couple of times they didn't work and the bed got soaked
in.......well, you know. I wasn't allowed out of bed so I had to roll over and grab the railing while they cleaned up, then roll over the opposite way. It didn't feel very good and someone had to help me roll over. Other times, they had some kind of plastic thing attached to my but that held a bag.
Not very comfortable. Eventually I could raise up to have a bed pan placed under me. That worked, but it hurt to lay on it. Finally I graduated to a bedside commode. That was heaven.
At the end, while I could walk to the bathroom and use the toilet, my legs were not strong enough
to stand up afterwards. A nurse would have to come in and help me stand. As a friend paraphrased, Welcome to the hospital, check your modesty at the door. I had a catheter to take away the urine and that wasn't bad.

The breathing tube.
Again, this was in my mouth and throat after the liver transplant. It was uncomfortable and I couldn't breathe deeply. I couldn't talk. I could only take little breaths. It was enough but I was sure looking forward to a lung filling deep breath. Probably even worse, I couldn't talk. When family came in, we would just stare at each other. Finally I tried making hand signals. Letters of the alphabet. We finally make an alphabet chart on a piece of paper. That way I could point to a letter and we could then spell words. That worked fairly well. My son make another that had the letters lined up like a querty keyboard with such things as yes, no and water that I could point to.
It was interesting pointing to the letters as my hands were still tied to the bed, with minimal movement. A pencil helped, but the paper had to be within reach.
In order to take out the tube they had a procedure to first remove the phlegm in your throat and lungs. They had a device attached that pushed a little air into your throat. It made you cough and clear some of the phlegm, but it hurt a lot as it caused you to arch your body and compress your chest muscles. After three days, the nurse said she would take out the tube and wanted me to humm loudly, which I did. I guess it helps, so you can't hear it coming out and your busy concentrating on humming. After a few days I was moved to another room.

The Breathalyzer.
I call it that though I suppose it's opposite of a real Breathalyzer. In this one you put your mouth on a tube and suck in as hard as you can. There is a little ball in a column that shows how well you are doing. This thing was to be used 10 times in a row, every hour, or anytime you had the opportunity. The idea was to build up your lungs to get them used to working again, especially the one that was deflated for the operation. A big part was to keep you from getting pnemonia.
This device followed me all through the hospital and even home, where I was to keep using it.

The tubes.
I'm not going to be able to detail all the tubes that were in me but I'll try to get as many as I remember. I had the usual IV site. At first they used it all the time, then at certain times with certain drugs. I had a site on the left side of my neck, a tube that allowed them to inject medicine as well as withdraw blood samples. This was interesting as sometimes they could give me two drugs at once. One in the arm, one in the neck.
On the right side of my neck was an access tube that they could use for dialyses. I had that done once for 3 hours just before my transplant. It was painless and no big deal for me.
Another thing that's connected is an oxygen sensor. It clips over the end of your finger and the nurses even tape them on. It always gets in the way when you move your arm. They had another kind that clips on your ear. They clip it on and put some tape on. That was best in that it left my hands free, but the problem was it was easy to pull off. Then people would be calling and bells ringing until it was put back on. After about 3 tries over two days, I was put back on the finger method.
I don't know how many tubes I had in my chest but here's what I remember. Two, that looked like 5/8 diameter that led to a collecting box. One about 3/8 diameter that went to the same place.
Another 3, one on my left and two on my right. They had a container that filled up with (who knows what) that the nurses emptied every day.
The tubes were eventually taken out, one at a time or sometimes more. Ea. time there was a ritual of taking a deep breath and then breathing out while they were pulling the tube out. The only one that really hurt a little was one of the chest tubes, the 5/8 one. Some of the tubes, when they pull them out are nearly 2 feet long. All that inside? When they took out the ones in the neck they kinda tipped the bed so my head was down, though slightly. Most of these tubes were held on by a stitch or two, and that had to be cut away first. When the last of the big chest tubes was taken out, it left a hole in my skin. It wasn't raw skin it seemed, and at the first they had a bag taped to it. This was still collecting fluid from inside my chest. I would lay there and the bag would slowly fill. By this time I could sit up and get out of bed. When I would sit up, the fluid would run out and nearly fill the bag. The nurse would empty it. They kept
track of how much fluid, of any kind, that leaked out. This bag stayed with me nearly until I was discharged. They put a bandage on it and it finally closed up at home.

On being thirsty.
Even before I went into the hospital I had a problem with being thirsty all the time, probably from the bad liver. I would eat chipped ice and drink cold water and anything else I could get my hands on. Toward the end it got a little better.
During most of my hospital time I was quite thirsty. At first they wouldn't give me any water, as I was getting nourishment pumped into me. And at different times water was bad for me.
My first taste was a small sponge on a stick. You put it in your mouth, clamp down, and try to suck water out of it. That lasted about 2 seconds. The other favorite was, use it to wipe your lips. It helped, but only very little. When I was moved from the heart area to the liver area, I could eventually have some water. Little bits in a cup. There were times when a nurse would grab the cup out of my hand, when she thought I had enough.
After the transplant we went through the cycle again; sponge, little water, almost all I wanted.
When I was days away from getting out of there, I finally could have all the water I wanted.
Here at home the thirst has let up, but now they want me to drink 2 liters a day. When I was thirsty I couldn't have it, now that I'm not, I have to it drink all day.

THE FOOD.
I think most folks would agree that hospital food is pretty bland. That's true. Here is another thing to note. Now days they have a bunch of menus for what you can have and not have.
Now, that is noted on the menu, sometimes hand written . Low salt, Low carb etc.
Plus the liquid diet menu.
I started out with the liquid menu. It was always-broth, tea, a mini carton of juice and jello.
It didn't taste too bad (except the tea) and it's hard to eat the whole thing in the beginning.
By the second day it's, "Oh that again." By the fourth day it's throw it away, I won't eat that crap. But I did have to anyway.
After much begging I finally was given solid food. Now remember, the menu is always the same.
For all week, all month and all year. They give you a menu the night before and a pencil to mark your choices.
Breakfast. They had choices of hot, cold and fruit. After trying the hot stuff I switched to Corn Flakes or other types of cereal and fruit. You know? You just can't screw up cereal.
Lunch. The entree food was a little better.
Dinner. The entree had about 7 choices, some of which weren't too bad.
But the point is, it never changed. How many days in a row can you eat pasta? Or anything on the menu? My taste buds weren't normal and the food didn't taste that good. Something else
that was frustrating. One of the pills I took was to help the appetite. It was a derivative of marijuana. It didn't make me high (darn) but did make me hungry. I wondered if I took a whole bunch of them if I would get high, or break into the hospital kitchen and eat everything in sight?
The food wasn't delivered at exactly the same time every day and there were times I was hungry enough to eat, but just before the food arrived a doctor or two would come in and want to do something. So he got to play doctor and I got to play patient and all the time my food was sitting there getting cold, and it was never that hot to begin with.
I won't say how difficult it is to eat while in bed, with the tray high enough I could barely see what was on it. I had to be helped some in the beginning. Later I would have them put the tray on my lap where I could see it. That was much better. At any rate, I don't miss the food. I'd like to see them have that mad TV chef, Gorden whoever, in their kitchen hollering at them.

The exercise.
As I have mentioned, the time in the hospital had allowed most of my muscle to atrophy.
The most evident was my legs and arms. Not being able to sit up or stand was frustrating.
For most of the time 'Joe' would come in and exercise me laying in bed. Raise one leg at a
time, move it left to right and several other exercises for the legs and arms. He started early in my hospital "career" and came every day, except weekends. One of the things that made my feel good was when he would praise me for how well I was doing. True or not, it was the kind of encouragement that helped me to get thru the day. He was an ex Army guy, as I was, and we seemed to hit it off. I looked forward to his visit each day.
The second person who came thru, more toward the end, was a physical therapist. Her purpose
was to get me walking.
She brought a walker when she came and would get me up (sometimes with help) and put the walker in front of me. Then she would try to walk me. A few steps at first and when I was ready
we would go up and down the hallway. The second time I was in the hospital she came around again. She was quite short and had a high pitched voice. It could be grating on me. Once when I was not doing so well she called out my name, seemed like a hundred times in a row, very fast and loud. It got so in my head that I couldn't think about walking and staying up and shortly I keeled over. It was lucky there were about 5 people around me and caught me before I bounced off the floor. Later I got my own walker and my wife would bring it in. By that time I didn't have a problem falling over and it was good exercise.

The lift team.
I can't write this without mentioning the lift team. They went around the hospital checking with the nurses to see if they needed help with patients. There were usually two of them and they were a great help for me when I couldn't get up. I don't know how many teams there were, but they were on call as well. If some one needed then they could be called.

As you can see, these fellows were fairly big and strong. They were very friendly as well and it was easy to joke with them.

I always wanted to do something special for them, like get a newspaper to write big article about them. That was never to happen, but I did see at one nurses station a plaque that had been given them. I don't know if other hospitals have teams like this, but they were a nice thing.

Roomates.
Generally they had two person rooms, sometimes more, and a private room was available, but
at a huge cost. Not something insurance would pay for. One nurse did tell me that people who had private rooms didn't need to deal with the hospital fare. If permitted they could have anything they wanted to eat. Steak. Lobster. Of course they had to pay for it, but so did we, in the end.
The liver ward has since moved to the new Ronald Reagan wing where every room is private.
My roommates were several as I was moved to a bunch of different rooms. Some were friendly and talkative. Some were more reserved. All in all we tried to support each other and our families did as well.
One room I was in for about four days, I had a young kid 19 years old as a room mate.
He was there for a heart transplant. He was from Arizona and his mother stayed with him, even sleeping on some chairs at night. One day she was going somewhere and it was cold outside. My wife gave her one of my jackets we had recently bought to keep her a little warmer, outside and inside. Those kind of gestures make you feel good inside. I guess they were eventually told their was no heart available at that time, so they finally went back home to Arizona to wait.
Of the rest, most were OK and I won't bore you with a description.

The hired help.
I must say the nurses and all the folks who I dealt with were wonderful. The nurses were
so good. And patient. They put up with me, even let me sing to them. Sometimes they even joined in. Now my voice isn't fantastic, and it wasn't working well there, but they put up with it and smiled as well. As mentioned I promised them a CD of my own songs and after a couple of months was able to deliver a bunch of them. While they seemed happy about the CD's they
seemed equally happy to see me. They remembered me and said they never get to see a patient after they leave the hospital. All that attention felt good as well.
One of the things that I noticed, the nurses seemed to be from all parts of the world and all different colors. Such a dedicated group I had never seen, and they worked so well together. I never heard a cross word from any of them.

The doctors were very attentive, tho less friendly than the nurses. They had a job to do and were very busy. So while not jovial they were friendly. And they were very good, or I would not be writing this.

Pills. Currently, about 3 months down the road I take about 35 pills a day. They are divided between morning, noon and evening. The most important are the anti-rejection drugs.
Without these pills my system would attack and kill my new liver. In the beginning it's kind of a drag to take so many, but they are divided up into morning, afternoon and evening. After a while it gets to be routine, especially when they are keeping me alive.

Summation.
Sort of. While it's not any fun being told you could die from your disease, I had my faith in God
to help me thru. I never was depressed or felt sorry for myself. Did I wish it wasn't happening? Well, I probably did a time or two. Mostly, I'm from the school of, "It is what it is, so deal with it." Funny, I never had any trepidation or nervousness when confronted with all these procedures.
More curious than any thing. Oh, open heart surgery? Never had that before. Wonder what it's like? Guess I'll find out.

There were a ton of people that took up prayer for me. From friends, churches and even some folks on the internet. I appreciate that. I believe it did work. I believe it was a miracle. It sure seems that way when I was only a couple of days away from eternity. To all those who did, thank you and God bless.

Follow ups

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
It is nearly 4 months since I left the hospital. In the beginning I had to go back every week for a clinic visit to check how I was progressing. At that time I would also do labs so they could check my blood work. During the second visit they took out the staples from the liver operation. That did not hurt and it was nice to have them gone. Also, by the second visit I was able to discard my walker. After about 3 weeks it became every other week, then a month between visits, and now every two months. The labs are now done every two weeks.

I feel pretty good. I can drive, play 9 holes of golf, tho I have to take a limited swing, and I'm limited to lifting about 15 pounds. After a year I can begin to lift normally. The doctors say I'm recovering really well and should live to a ripe old age. What ever that means.

Oct. 30 2008

6 months have gone by now. Feeling better all the time. Went back East and did a show with friends in my old home town. It felt good to pick and sing again. Back to work as consultant for 5 hours a day. That's enough. Onward.

August  29, 2009

14 months past.  Doing great.  No problems.  Hope it continues.  Currently I take 9,125 pills a year.  It's worth it.  Haven't been doing consulting for 5 months as economy is down.  In 2010 we plan on building a summer house in Panama New York.  ONWARD.