Page 6
Let me back up a bit…
Sometime in September or October, my brother called me one day and wanted to go out for dinner...I think this was the dinner he owed me when I won the bet in 2002! Like the time I spent in the hospital in 2002 for pancreatitus was an eye opener for my dad, the time I spent in the hospital for internal bleeding was a real eye opener for my brother on how serious my disease really was. Little did I know that he had began looking into becoming a live donor, which simply meant that they would take part of his liver and give it to me while leaving the other part of his liver in him. Most people aren’t aware of this fact, but the liver actually will regenerate itself to the size it originally was within about 6 – 8 weeks for both people. By the way, there is one liver and 2 kidneys. Dialysis is for the kidneys and not the liver! I find that most people get the liver and kidneys confused sometimes. Anyway, he had already talked to the transplant coordinator and had also arranged for some blood testing however wanted to talk to me about the matter and ask if it would be something I would want to do. He understood the consequences and the possible outcomes with a procedure like this but he still wanted to do it (my brother had 5 kids at the time!).
After that we both went through a series of tests and procedures during the Fall in London to determine if he was compatible. The main test that both of us did was a CT scan if I’m not mistaken. Basically for this test you have to drink a fluid called barium prior to the test. Now I have heard horror stories about this stuff but somehow the hospital had found a way to mix the barium into a “kool aid” type of drink so it wasn’t that bad. If you have ever had one of these tests you will certainly appreciate this story however, if not, be forewarned if you ever have it. After you drink this fluid, they give you an I.V. for the dye to be injected. Yep…they inject you with dye when they do the test…it helps them see stuff better apparently. It’s Nuclear Medicine so I don’t really understand it. They warn you ahead of time that when they inject you with the dye it may feel like you need to go to the bathroom or that you basically have diarrhea. Well sure enough, when they injected the dye I felt like I had just crapped myself. I wanted to check my underwear but knew it wasn’t possible because of what they had told me. After the test they had thought that they found some sort of a blood clot or something near my heart so guess what, I had the joy of doing the test yet again at a later date. Same feeling and this time they still thought there was a problem. I had another pretty neat test, but in order to make an already long story short, they determined that there was nothing wrong at all. Praise God!
Ok, so back to the whole live donor thing. Everything was a match and seemed to look like a go when the transplant coordinator called us sometime in February 2005 and told us that the liver was too small and the part that I would receive would not be sufficient for me to survive with before it regenerated. I know my brother was disappointed, and to be honest I felt a little disappointment as well however one thing I had never shared with my brother at the time was that I had always had a sense that God was going to allow me to go through the entire transplant process in order for His purpose & plan to be fulfilled.