Facing a Huge Setback

 I spent most of August in the Cleveland Clinic Hospital.  I started out on the regular floor, but as my MELD Score climbed to 36 and my condition deteriorated, the doctors believed I was bleeding internally and started blood transfusions. I recall a kind doctor sitting by my bed and asking me if it would be all right for them to move me to the ICU so they could do some tests more quickly.  I agreed.  Boy was I in for a shock!

There were two tests they needed to do right away:  an endoscopy and a colonoscopy.  What they didn't forewarn me was that because of my condition, they couldn't risk giving me anesthesia.  The probability that I'd go into a coma was too high.  I didn't want to risk losing my opportunity for a liver, so I agreed.  They did an endoscopy and colonoscopy bedside, with no medication or sedation. 

Let me tell you... I will never agree to that again in this lifetime.  It felt like someone was playing a violent game of racecars going over massive speedbumps at 100 mph inside of me.  I don't know if it was because I was so sick, or if it always feels like that, and that's why they give you sedatives to do the procedure.  Every procedure I had during that period was without sedatives.  It was honestly traumatic.  They couldn't find the source of any bleeding, regardless of the tests they ran.

I was too weak physically to resist or make a commotion.  I wanted to live badly enough that I probably wouldn't have fussed regardless.  In the quiet moments, I began to take in my surroundings The ICU had dividers and curtains, but no doors.  I could see the two people across from me and kitty corner.  Both of them were comatose and on life support.  I heard the emergency team intubate the man on the other side of the divider. I could literally feel death stalking the halls of that ward. I later learned that few people ever left that ICU unit.  Most patients died there.  The nurses lined the halls and cheered when I eventually left.  I refused to give in to fear of death. What flicker of life that was left in me fought to hold onto hope and believe that God would step in and everything would be okay.  

The next thing I knew, a doctor was apologizing that I had to be removed from the transplant list.  I was simply too sick and wouldn't survive surgery.  In that moment, I was devastated beyond words and filled with anger.  I was not going to accept what that doctor said!   I had been listening to my church's livestream feed and service was in progress.  I knew that when things are impossible, that God is the master of the impossible.  

I texted my son, who was in that church service.  I told him the news and wanted him to ask the church to pray for me.  He went to the platform and showed our pastor the text.  I saw him step to the pulpit and have the church go to immediate prayer for me.

If you've read the story in the bible where the lame man's friends tore the roof off a building to lower him down to Jusus... that's how I felt.  That's when my pastor, church, family and my friends began to carry me.  I honestly could feel the strength of all the prayers being lifted up for me.  

August 13, 2020

Dealing with being taken off the 

transplant list.

Side Note:  If you listen to the video, I talk about the difficulty of lifting my head.  I later found out that I was clipped to the bed with the dialysis cords - that's why I couldn't lift my head.  I laughed and laughed over that.  The humor was good medicine.