JoAnn, Hope all is well with you! I still have a hard time grasping everything that happened Dougs last few weeks. It was just so crazy how it all came about and scarey. I always asked him about his results from lactulose, his sugars, inspected his feet and his other vitals, BP, weight, temp and oxygen levels. They closed of the TPS last year to get better control over his encepalpathic episodes, after 6yrs of cleaning the stint it opened to far. Well in doing this they increased his fluid pills, which messed with kidney function to much so that was a constant game. I always asked if he was putting out urine but never thought to ask about the color of it. One day I just had a bad feeling so I took him to Boston to DR, we got there and his BP was 60 over 40. They took him by ambulance to hospital...... he was now in kidney failure. His meld jumped to 34 from a recent 20. He was put on dialysis with in 2 days, they thought now he might need a kidney but dialysis was helping some. Then six days later we were offered a liver but it was HIGH risk for cancer so we opted out with our fingers crossed. I left Boston and by the time I got home they called with another offer.... the organ was being harvested the next morning so we took it. Surgery was 9.5 hours as his portal vein was in bad shape and they couldnt control the bleeding, they had to pack him and leave him open to give the liver a chance to start working and it did, bleeding slowed down and they could close him up 12 hours later. Everything was looking up except they gave him a total of 100 units of blood, which has a preservative in it and the new liver couldnt keep up with filtering it out of his system, that in turn started clotting in both the vein and artery to and from the new liver cutting off blood supply. They went back in and removed the clots. left him open again in case they had to go in for more clots. Every medication known to man must have been given to him to stop all this from happening but it didnt work..... all his organs went with out blood to long and started shutting down he was not responsive when he was taken off all pain meds. So when my girls got there we had him taken off all meds and machines except pain meds he passed with in 20 minutes. He never once woke up in those three days which was bittersweet, i didnt get to say I loved him, but his last memory was He Made it to hear those words....Your getting your transplant!!
His DRs were great they did above and beyond for him, You some times forget they get attached too, Dougs room had a constant flow of people coming to say goodbye, Our Co-ordinater and The head of the transplant center came in right after he passed( they waited outside so we could have our time. First time I ever saw a DR cry over loosing a patient. They said you cant have attachments to patients but they couldnt help it with us, we had a tremendous amount of positive attitude and the best in humor and banter between us. The day Doug was admitted I told them if Doug had died in my car I would have rolled his a$% out into the southeast expressway and went home..LOL
I know Doug would have laughed at the irony of passing at 4:20 on friday the 13th and I picked up his ashes on april fools day the little sh*^#!!! I know its along road for me to travel now but I will make it.
Sue