Home After Transplant-2008

Casey did so well after his liver transplant that they sent him home only five days later!!!  Like he told the doctors...that's how he rolls!!  We both had NO idea what was in store!!  We were sent home with a bag full of meds and a binder full of information.  His diet needed to change completely, not to mention his lifestyle!  No alchohol, no Red Seal Tobacco (dip), no going out in public without a mask over his nose and mouth, no lifting over ten pounds, etc...  The hardest part for Casey was the NO RED SEAL!!  We had to find other forms of oral fixation for him!  Tried giving him candy to suck on or gum to chew on...that didn't work!  So he wore a nicotine patch for a while...that somewhat worked.  But eventually, he kicked the nasty habit on his own!  Thank God!  Another lifestyle change that we could both do without was the three trips per week to Baylor Medical Center in Dallas.  He had to go get blood drawn to make sure he was doing ok and not rejecting the new liver.  But as long as we are together, we enjoy whatever it is we have to do!

He was prescribed numerous medications.  If you laid all the bottles out in a row, I swear it would be a mile long!  The most important meds are his Anti-Rejection pills.  He has to take these FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.  These meds are immuno-suppresives.  They suppress his immune system so that his body won't try to reject the "foreign" liver in his body.  Because he takes these pills, he is very susceptive to any and every kind of virus.  We have to very careful and do our best to keep germs away!  We have a bottle of Germ-X around every corner at our home!  He was also prescribed steroids. Boy, I could really do without him taking steroids!  In the beginning, he had to take very high doses.  OMG, talk about having Man-o-pause...he was very moody!  I almost couldn't handle him and had to stop and count to ten and remember what he was going through before tearing his head off! (Love you, Casey!)  Because he took so many steroids, he had steroid-induced diabetes.  He had to watch what he ate very closely to make sure his blood sugar didn't get too high.  He also had to drink diet drinks and stay away from energy drinks.  This is how and when he got addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper.  Yuck!  I won't bore you with all the other meds he was prescribed...just know that there were numerous pills and he had to use a  huge pill box to keep them all straight and help him remember what times to take all of them!

We were well on the way to recovery when we hit a bump in the road two weeks later.  One of his many blood tests revealed that his body was rejecting his liver!  Of course we were devastated!  What did this mean?  Was he going to make it?  Did he need another liver?!  Oh no!  Little did we know, that all that would need to take place to correct this was another 5 day stay in the hospital, a biopsy (he hates those) and an adjustment on his meds!  Whew!  Close call!  The doctors just gave him even more steroids...yay for me...and raised his anti-rejection dosage. 

He did very well after that.  He had no more rejections.  His lifestyle got back to normal as the days progressed.  After the first few months or so after transplant, he no longer had to wear a mask and he was able to go back to work part time!  Did I mention... during his initial two week stay in the hospital and then throughout his transplant surgery and post-op recovery I was not going to work?  I had already missed about a month of work and then had to be gone another month and a half taking care of him at home afterwards!  I took one LONG vacation.  Not that it was really a vacation!  Thank God we both had the time to take!

He worked part time for about a month and then went back to full time.  Everything was almost back to normal.  He still had to go back and forth to Baylor-Dallas three times a week...those trips eventually tapered down just like his meds did. Thankfully, his mood swings also tapered down!! But he still did suffer from some pain in the scarred area (He has a really cool scar in the shape of the Mercedes Benz symbol!) and suffered from insomnia because of all the steroids he was taking.  It was nothing a little pain pill and sleeping pill couldn't handle!  What I couldn't handle was how goofy he acted when he was on his "ambien high!" It was sometimes scary!  He would say the most ridiculous things and see people or animals in our home.  One night, he saw a big brown bear while we were lying in bed...or as he called it "that sneaky bear!"  Then another night he swore that I had the devil in me and was trying to exorcise me while fighting the big muscular guy behind me who was looking at him funny!  Good times, good times!

Poor Casey...he went from being totally healthy to being deathly ill...from healthy weight to skin and bones...and then way back up to past his healthy weight!  LOL!   Because of the steroids he was taking, he always felt hungry!  He ate to his little hearts content!  Because of his weight fluctuation, he now has jeans from sizes 30-36!  Ha ha!  There was lots of testing involved here and there throughout his recovery period and he wouldn't need another dreaded biospy until the one year anniversary of his transplant.   His one year mark was October 2009.