That’s not a typo in the title. You’ll see in a minute. A couple of posts ago I wrote an update to my ongoing liver problems. I talked about how I had a new nurse practitioner that went to bat for me with my liver doctor to get the ball rolling on a living liver transplant. If you look in the comments below that post you’ll see that I got good news about how my doctor waived my MELD score requirements and referred me for transplant. Several days later he asked me to come in to see him to discuss the way forward. For some reason I got a foreboding feeling about this, though I didn’t know why. Turns out that feeling was right. Monday, he explained to me that he had talked to the doctor from the transplant center and they turn down the referral for the transplant.

They evaluated my condition and determined that the risk of the surgery outweighed the risk of continuing in my condition at it’s present level of severity. I tried to explain that I would rather take the risk of dying than to continue to live this way. That’s when they hit me with a truth I could not deny. It was not only a risk for me, it was a risk for my sister who would be making the donation. While her risk would admittedly be lower, there was still some to be had. Several donors had died due to complications since they recently started doing this procedure. I couldn’t argue with that. Of course I would not want my sister to be put at unnecessary risk. So that’s, as they say, is that.

Well, not really that. To my doctor’s credit, he offered an alternative to try and help me. My biggest problem is the fact that blood does not flow easily through my hardened liver. In an attempt to compensate for that, my body has created what they called shunt arteries that allow a good amount of the blood to bypass the liver so it can keep flowing. Unfortunately, when that happens, ammonia is not filtered out of my blood by the liver and causes the hepatic encephalopathy that I’ve talked about before. So the doctor recommended what they call an embolization of the renal AV shunt. In non-doctorese that means they are going to stick some tools up in my blood tubes and close off the bypass shunt so that blood will be forced to go through the liver. My doctor says two things could happen after this. One, it could cause my symptoms to get better by forcing all the blood through the liver for filtering. Two, it could cause my liver to fail even further because it won’t have the bypass to take the load off of it. Of course, option one would be the desired outcome, but option two also has positive possibilities. If the liver starts to fail even more then I could meet the transplant centers requirement for the liver replacement. Guess we’ll see what happens on Friday, because that’s when I’m having it done.

What? The typo that isn’t a typo? Oh yeah, almost forgot. When they stick whatever probes or grabby knifey things up inside me, guess where they are going in? Yup, the groin. I’m gonna get stuck in the junk. Well not specifically the junk, but in a very close neighborhood. Hopefully, I’ll be blissfully asleep for all that. That hasn’t been clearly expressed. I better be! Anyway, sorry for all the wonderful visuals on Christmas Eve but while this surgery is not high risk, there is some associated with it. If you never hear from me again then you’ll know I probably shuffled off this mortal coil with a metal coil stuck in my bizzness.

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