John was flown out to Adelaide on the Royal Flying Doctors on the 8th February, and had hepatorenal syndrome Type 1 – his kidneys were failing rapidly. The Doctors gave him terlipressin which is a drug that they had only used a couple of times on other patients with the same problem, to try and rectify the kidney problem. They did not expect that he would make it through Wednesday night.
Somehow the drug worked and he is still with us. He has been moved to a Liver Transplant Centre where they are doing a workup / assessment for transplant. He has only just come off the terlipressin and they are waiting for his kidneys to function properly on their own before taking CT scans next week. He has been for many tests this week, and it has been a long draining process.
His big problem now is not the drinking, he stopped that back in June, 2010; but the fact that he continues to smoke!! When I spoke to his Doctor about it months ago, he told me to ‘give the guy a break’… so I haven’t nagged too much. But now, with lung function tests etc, and the possibility of transplant coming up, it is becoming a problem that the specialists are talking about daily.
Friday the 25th we will find out whether he is eligible for transplant. Fingers crossed.
Another thing I didn’t expect was the process of transplantation. Sure I understood the blood type and size, and necessity, but I still thought you would be listed sequentially… I didn’t think the necessity would change depending on others needs being greater etc, or on John getting worse. Of course this now seems completely reasonable – but I just hadn’t factored in that we would need to move to the city so quickly after being listed. I thought we would wait until he was, say, fourth from the top??!!
We are waiting for the confirmation Friday, before we start thinking too much about what we are going to do. It will be extremely difficult, as so many of you have also indicated, I am the only one working and as I work for myself with established clients, will find a move and paying the bills extremely difficult. I guess this is the least of our problems, but just adds to the ‘background’ worry of what is all going on.
I am so glad he is being assessed, but worried about the kidneys, smoking and the final specialist team results and hope we will cope with everything. Thanks for reading, a problem shared is a problem halved...