I didn’t think it would take me this long to write about my transplant process, but it turns out there is a lot of stuff to do post-transplant that has kept me busy. Twice weekly visits to the hospital being the most time-consuming, along with shoveling tons of pills down my gullet everyday. Don’t get me wrong, I am most happy to be doing this because I get to live! Well, as long as my body doesn’t reject the new liver, and so far it has been a most hospital host. Let me jump back and tell you how it all went down.

The last three months or so, I was really sick. I was pretty much in bed all the time and sleeping probably at least 18 hours a day. I told my wife that I felt like I was pretty much in the end game and if I didn’t get a transplant soon, I would be shuffling off this mortal coil. She told me that I was fine and not to worry. That’s OK, your wife is supposed to give you encouraging words even if the look in her eyes didn’t necessarily reflect those words. I also told my doctor at the last regular check-up I felt this way and he told me all my labs looked stable and I just had to be patient since I was at the top of the transplant list. I just nodded my head along, remembering how it had been nearly five years ago when I told everyone that something was wrong with me and it took a year to convince someone that it actually was.

On December 12th, in one of my waking hours, I was attempting to get some work done when I got a call from the Liver Transplant Center. The lady on the phone told me they had a possible candidate liver for me and I needed to get to the hospital. I didn’t get overly excited as I had been through this before. However, one thing was different this time. They told me they were already holding a room for me so get to admitting as soon as I could. This did tend to ratchet up the hope a bit. Still, I tried not to get it too high, because the fall would be worse if I did. When Michelle and I got to the hospital, it was like a whirlwind! Admitting was already waiting on me and had all my stuff ready to go. They slapped a plastic bar code bracelet on me and whisked me up to a room in the transplant center of the hospital. When I got off the elevator and approached the room, there were like six people just standing outside the door to welcome me. In no time at all I was in a backless gown and hooked up to all kinds of machines. Then one of the transplant nurse practitioners came in to see me. She gave us the low down on what was going on. There was a donor that was on life support and their family had chosen to pull the plug. In these cases, the donor patient doesn’t always pass away immediately after the machines are shut off. In order for the liver to be viable for transplant, they had to pass away within 30 minutes. That would be the main criteria for if the transplant would proceed. Also, the transplant surgeon would have to do some testing of the candidate liver to make sure everything was good to go. That was the other hurdle.

After that, things slowed down. Way down! I was on hot standby, just chilling out to see if this would all go down. My sister, Shannon, arrived in that time to help stand the vigil with Michelle. In this time I began to doubt it was going to happen at all, but three very long hours later we got the word we were hoping to hear. It was a go! Things ramped up again and I was soon on the surgery floor saying good-bye to Michelle and Shannon. I hoped it wasn’t good-bye forever. Right before they wheeled me into the OR, Michelle half-jokingly asked the transplant surgeon if she could come in and watch. I say half-jokingly because if he had said yes she would have done just that. She loves those freaky medical shows they have all over the streaming spectrum now and the weirdo (I say that lovingly) wanted a live show. Of course the surgeon said no but he did say he would take some pictures for her.

In the OR I barely had time to say hi to everyone on the team before the anesthesiologist pushed the knock-out juice into my IV line. During previous procedures that required being knocked out, I usually dreamed for some time before regaining consciousness. Not this time. One second I was staring at the big ass light above the operating room table, the next I was waking up in the ICU. I remembered one of the nurses before the surgery telling me I would be waking up with a tube down my throat and not to mess with it when I came to. I promised her I wouldn’t and while it felt very strange, I didn’t touch it. Or at least I didn’t think I had. More on that in a second. Michelle and Shannon were sitting on a couch next to the bed and both came over when they saw I was awake. They told me not to try and talk and explained that the six hour surgery had went well. I did a bit of a self exam and discovered the following. I was being penetrated by numerous things. The aforementioned breathing tube, three lines going into my neck, two drain tubes coming out my side into these plastic bulb like things, regular IV line, and the one I loved the most, a hose line right up my pee-pee hole! Sure, it was convenient to just whiz away when I needed to, but all things considered, I think I would have preferred using a portable urinal jug. I also had all kinds of things wrapped around my midsection obscuring the incision site.

When Michelle was talking to me, I tried to take her hand and that’s when I noticed that both of my wrists had been tied to the side of the bed! WTF? Michelle explained to me that evidently I had not kept my promise to the nurse. I have absolutely no memory of this to this day, but I was told I had woken up before and tried to pull my breathing tube out and fought them all the way. It took Michelle doing some masterful medical whispering into my ear to finally calm me down and I went back to sleep. They tied me up to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. I was supposed to be in the ICU for at least a couple of days but after a physical therapist came in and I demonstrated I could walk around the ward (trailing along all the medical equipment) they kicked me out of there and back up to my normal room after only half a day. I spent the next week recovering there. While I was plenty sore from the surgery, I felt my energy coming back. It was so surreal because I’ve had next to no energy for a long long time and to feel it surging back into me was something akin to almost an orgasmic experience. There is a catch though. While my energy is coming back, my stamina from not doing much of all in the last year or so is very low. So while I have the feeling that I can do anything right now, I’ve been cautioned to take it easy and when I don’t, my body lets me know right quick that I am going to have to work slowly to get that stamina back. It’s coming though!

While recovering in the hospital we had a visit from the head of all transplant surgeons in the DFW area. Michelle showed him the pictures of my old and new liver that the transplant surgeon had sent her. I showed this on my last quick post but I am going to show it here again.

Like I said before, even Hannibal Lecter wouldn’t want that shriveled up sorry excuse for a liver. The head surgeon took one look and then said that I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Ha! Told you! BTW, doesn’t that new liver (which we nicknamed Oliver) look like a nice chicken breast?

Future plans? Well, I am still stuck in Dallas for at least another three months of post-op care. Initially, I had to go back to the hospital twice a week for blood work and check-ups. That got reduced to once a week at my appointment today. I’m taking a butt ton of pills twice a day that help my body not reject the new liver. Those will get reduced over time until they have me taking just one or two medication that I will have to take for the rest of my life. Small price to pay! Those meds reduce my immune system so I am back to wearing masks everywhere, not that I’m allowed to go everywhere. For the time being I am pretty much grounded to the rig and I’m not allowed to drive. I’m also not allowed to lift anything more than ten pounds. This one gets me out of a lot of tasks and believe me, Michelle is well aware of that! I feel a pay-back list may be forming somewhere to be presented to me in the future. Oh yeah, I was supposed to be talking about the future. After three months of this closely monitored post-op care I will be released back into the wild. We plan on blowing this popsicle stand after almost two years stranded here. We are going back to Virginia to our favorite campground in the mountains. There we will stay for another three months of less intrusive post-op care from my original doctor that treated me. After that, we are truly free to hit the road again! Our plans are to head back out to Colorado to continuing exploring that beautiful state and then on to points in the NW of the country until we roll over into the land of Tim Hortons and Poutine, that being Canada of course. Because of COVID and all this other medical mess, we still haven’t had a chance to roll the LeeLander into the Great White North to visit with our family there. My BIL and SIL are currently building their retirement home on the shores of a lake in the mountains in British Columbia. They are putting in an RV pad with all the accessories just for us to hang with them for a while. It’s going to be awesome!

Just one more thing I’d like to say before I wrap this up. It’s not lost on my that someone had to lose their life so I could live. I think about it everyday and I can never express how grateful I am that someone chose to be a donor to save someone else’s life with their selfless gift. I’m also a donor and I would encourage you to be one too.

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