Through a routine term life insurance policy work-up, Joe's lab tests revealed elevated liver enzymes. That was 19 years ago.

Since that point, this condition has been monitored at regular intervals. The official diagnosis is cryptogenic cirrhosis - meaning there is no known cause.

About 10 years ago, the monitoring was stepped up and the possibility of needing a liver transplant was discussed. Over the past 5 years Joe's vitality has been declining and there were intermittent medical episodes that required either hospitalization or a lot of medical care. It has become quite apparent in the last year that a transplant would be needed in the near future.

Joe is now being treated by Dr. Victor Navarro and his team at Jefferson University Hopsital. As of September 20, 2010, Joe is officialy on the liver transplant list. From that list, donors are matched with qualified patients who are both sick enough to need an organ and healthy enough to survive the procedure. We are hopeful that Joe will be called for a transplant soon.

Joe received a liver transplant on October 8, 2010!!!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Day After

We received word that Joe had a pretty good night. When we got to see him briefly last night, he was still sedated. He is awake today and Fay is on her way down to be with him. All of the kids decided to wait as he still has the breathing tube in and needs a lot of rest today.

We had already planned to be working at their old house today and tomorrow to get it cleaned out so we can put it on the market, so that's what we're up to today. We will probably go visit him sometime tomorrow, although none of us can bring our kids (the grandkids) because he is in ICU recovery.

There is so much more to share about how all of this came together, but today it still feels surreal that this really happened! He was officially on the donor list for only 2 weeks and 4 days!

One quick thing - when we met with the doctor last night, we were just so amazed at the dedication it takes to pull something like this off. The surgeon we met with at 9:30 last night was the same one that had flown somewhere to view the liver at 4:00 that morning! We are so thankful for such a skilled, dedicated person that was also willing to meet with us and answer all of our questions. The team at Jefferson has been nothing short of AMAZING!

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)