Transplant completed!

Garry had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks before being sent off to Madison. He was just not improving to a satisfactory baseline and the local hospital has no hepatologists onboard so Madison was trying to transfer him . Alas, our usual nemisis reared its ugly head as usual. Yes. thats right...the beast that is insurance. They had requested a letter from the state of Wisconsin stating that my husband had been disqualified from state insurance. We had provided the document that we recieved from the state but that was not good enough. They wanted a formal letter, reiterating what the document we sent to them already said. Repeat. A formal letter. I called the state and the state said, "Good luck." They don't issue such letters since the document we submitted was perfectly legal.
The insurance company responded with "Too bad".
Obviously, they didn't want the client because he was going to be expensive with an upcoming transplant but its illegal in the U.S. to deny a client based on pre-existing conditions so they came up with a fictional letter.
Little did they know who they were messing with though. I got on the phone and called and called and called until I found one obscure office whose supervisor felt sorry for me and agreed to write such a letter. lol.
I swear that we heard the cheers from Madisons transplant team all the way from here when they got the news. We all had given up...well. not all. Not me.

So off we went and unfortunately the livers that came in that week were not matches and there were worse off people on the list. We were arranging to have him brought here to a nursing home for physical rehab and were just approved when I got the call that a liver was coming in that night.
I was home naturally.

So off Jasmine and I went (we are in a declared truce). Friends took care of Molly, everything was in order but when we got there, the donor had not passed. That was a sad situation-sometimes the family waits until everybody has a chance to say goodbye or come to grips with the impending death. We don't know what actually happened but the transplant did not take place that night.
We knew that it was a young donor who was on life support after a fatal cardiac arrest. Young is in the 20-30 range.
In transplant, the preferred state of the donor is actually brain dead. This is because if its a cardiac death, the organs vessels might not be optimal and then of course the organ might be rejected by the surgeons.
It wasn't until the next day around 1 pm that we were told that the donor was taken off of life support moments before. The donor was not in the same hospital but the organs would be flown quickly to the recipients.  It was a very bitter sweet moment for us. We all took the time to say a prayer and to express gratitude.
But still, we had no clue if the organ was adequate. About an hour later, it was a go. The organ was deemed "beautiful" by the surgeons and Garry was off into surgery for the next 11 hours.

He is doing well at this point, progressing like a text book case more or less. His new liver took to him immediately though he will always be on anti rejection medications. I think that he will be another week before he is released but we still don't know if he will come home or go to a nursing home for therapy.

I am so grateful the the young donor who cared enough to give such a precious gift. I am grateful that the family might have made that choice and I am very sorry for their loss. A woman whose son died at 16 told me that her son donated everything he could and that because he did, she feels that parts of him are still alive in the world even if his spirit was departed. I hope that the family feels that way too.
Please consider donating your organs if you are healthy enough. There are shortages everywhere but I think I read that the liver and heart were the hardest ones to source.

I feel that now that this is behind us, we can focus on living again. Garry's health has been deteriorating for awhle but it started to accelerate around the New Year. I have felt very hopeless as a result and I didn't even realize it.
One thing my daughter said (unfairly) was that here I was dying and I was spending my time doing "nothing",  not living. She is correct but couldn't bother to take into account the reason I was doing nothing-I was being a caretaker-a very sick caretaker...all by myself. Maybe now I can at least breathe and see something of blessings.

Take care of yourselves everybody. I am not in such a bad way. I am mostly conciously purging all the tension from the last 2 years or so. It feels good.