Our Appointment...

..was so-so.. To start it off we were running late and that delay was increased by a wreck and traffic delay. When we arrived in the office waiting room, it was PACKED! I mean there was only 2 seats left with many patients who were sitting in their wheelchairs. We check in and waited...and waited...and waited.. The staff was kind and kept apologising.

When we went into our examining room, we sat down and made small talk and jokes...normal for us. In came Don's head doctor followed by a resident doctor. He asked the usual questions and we gave all the answers he needed. When there was a pause, I started to cover some of the many questions we had and asked about the living donor program.

To keep this as concise as I can, this is what we found out:
1. Since Don still has Hepatitis C, if he were to get a transplant now, by any means (live or cadaver liver) he would be right back in the same place he is health wise in 10 years, instead of the 30 years it took the first time for the Hepatitis C to destroy his liver. For some reason, after a transplant the degeneration is accelerated.

2. He is going to have another complete liver 'work up' done in 2 weeks to see just how badly the cirrhosis has advanced. This includes a biopsy and a MRI. It has been 2 years since his last biopsy.

3. Another appointment will follow the work up 1 week later and we will then know if we have enough time to try once again to rid him of the Hepatitis. Apparently there are some drugs coming onto the market that had good success and take less than a year to work. (I admit to being leery about this, only because I have been hearing about 'said' drugs for over 2 years now.)

4. As one person replied to my previous post, it is true that there have been some recent complications and live donor deaths. For this reason, apparently Texas no longer allows live donor liver transplants. I understand what the poster was telling me. I however could not stand by and allow Don to just die while waiting for a liver. Many many more die waiting for a liver than the small amount of complications and deaths from the live donor. If it comes to it, we will go out of state to seek the medical help Don needs.