Hey everyone. As you can see, I am not in surgery right now. The transplant was put on hold, and I will not be receiving this liver.
We were very close. Everything was pointing toward it happening. All the initial tests were done, and we fully believed this was moving forward. But when you arrive at the hospital, they still run a final series of tests to make sure it is safe to proceed.
During that final testing, a scan revealed a blood clot. In French, they called it a thrombose or a caillot. This was not a simple clot that just blocks a vein and can be easily cleared. It was located right where the new liver would be attached. That area needs to be clean and healthy for the transplant to work. Instead, it was fragile and compromised, almost like raw tissue, which made surgery too risky.
As discouraging as this was, it is better to know now than to not know at all.
I will be honest, it was extremely hard. I had family drive ten hours to be here. I shared the news publicly because I truly believed it was happening. I was ready. I was mentally prepared to go into surgery. And now, at nearly 10 p.m., it is clear that I am not being transplanted today.
This brings us back to the living donor plan, which is still in place.
I will be staying in the hospital for about a week while the team works on reducing the blood clot. I am currently on a medication that is being administered directly into my veins to help dissolve it.
Tomorrow, I will go to radiology for a smaller procedure. It is not anything like a liver transplant, but they will go in through the neck, pass through the liver, and reach the clot to aspirate it. The goal is to help it clear faster.
I am hopeful that this will allow us to continue toward the planned living donor transplant on February 23. If not, the advantage of a living donor is that the surgery is scheduled. If February does not work, it can be postponed until March or April, once the clot is fully resolved.
What is encouraging is that this clot was not present in November, so it developed quickly. That gives reason to believe it could also resolve quickly.
For now, I am being closely monitored to make sure the clot continues to shrink. My MELD score has gone down and has stabilized. It feels like I am back at square one, but I am not. I still have a living donor, and I still have a path forward.
The nurse is here now, and it looks like they need to replace one of my IV lines.
I will keep you all updated.
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