It’s official — I am a one year liver transplant survivor. One year ago today I was strapped to a table being gutted. My factory original liver was being replaced by 65% of my son’s.
I had just had an esophageal varices bleed, a 40-50% chance of mortality, according to our local boy now interning to be a doctor, Krishna Balarama. Things weren’t looking too good, as once they start bleeding, another incident isn’t far behind.
Marken took an emergency medical leave from the US Navy and came home, went through a few days of screening, and in a couple of weeks, we were doing the deed.
He finished up in the Navy by the end of the summer, and enrolled in WVU, He also joined the West Virginia Army National Guard and is spending his 1 year anniversary in Oklahoma. Because his primary training is in the Navy, and the Army does things a bit differently, he is doing 6 weeks of training.
He only had to make a 3 year commitment to the Guard, as he already had a fulltime term of enlistment under his belt. Typically a Guard contract is 6 years.
He has about 2.5 years remaining so naturally we hope the war in Iraq is resolved prior to the next cycle of call ups that would affect his unit. He is typically overly optimistic that he will be finsished before it will go again, as it returned recently.
Projecting from what my rate of recovery was, I probably would have been near normal by now. I was walking 3 miles leisurely at a pop, and was dropping my time towards one hour for the 3, but starting the interfern/ribavarin treatment knocked me for a loop so a projection is all I have.
I am still treading water, waiting to see what Krishna has in store for me. I assume there is some point to having a life extended, beyond simply existing for the sake of existence. My guess is something to do with cows.
The next big stat is 5 year survival. Seems doable, just need to get the next 34 weeks of treatment over without freaking out.
