I did not want to spend another night in the hospital!!  I missed being home in Spokane with my doggies, I missed Tim, and I missed my bed!  My hospital bed was so uncomfortable, it was consistently inflating and deflating, the buttons would only work at times, and I had to sleep in one position all the time because there wasn’t any room to spawl out.  Not to mention the number of times the nurses wake you up throughout the night to get vitals and then put a roommate in the mix and you are woken twice as much.

Yesterday I had two procedures (Endoscopy and Endometrial Biopsy with IUD insertion), both requiring me to go under general anesthesia.  Today, I lost my mind!!  I was extremely listless.  I would respond to nursing questions, but my responses were delayed, and I was very inattentive.  I was alert and oriented but slow to respond and would get forgetful at times.  I was experiencing complete delirium more than likely due to the anesthesia. 

The MELD score is used as a predictor of 90-day survival with a score range from 6-40 (+).  It is based on lab values of Total Bilirubin, Creatinine, INR and Sodium.  It has very strict criteria and needs to be updated daily.  Of course, although using the MELD score as a key indicator, the organ must still be compatible with my body makeup and be of matching blood type as well.  However, the MELD score will be updated and evaluated daily to make quick determination of priority if a donor becomes available. 

Today, my mom arrived in Seattle. At this point, I was so overwhelmed with everything they were doing to me. All the questions, all the pokes, all the tests and I had no idea what any of it meant! My mind was gone, I couldn’t think rationally, I couldn’t focus and I definitely couldn’t make decisions for myself. My mom arrived at just the right time because shit was about to get real, real fast!

279 miles in the back of an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, and unable to move! The beautiful sunrise was the only thing carrying me through the pain, the tears and the overwhelming fear! It was what felt like the longest road trip of my life and would become the most important trip I’ve ever made. Today began the journey that would become the rest of my life!

52.5% estimated 3-month mortality!! All I thought about throughout the night was the fact that I was dying and I would not survive without a liver transplant! I couldn’t even comprehend what that meant. It was as if someone flipped a switch in my brain and all I could do was pray! I remember my mom sitting by my bedside begging with me not to give up. I wasn’t giving up, but I couldn’t form any words, I couldn’t explain (and still can’t) the overwhelming flood of emotions I was going through. In that moment, I didn’t know how to live but I knew I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t ready, I had so much more life to live, and it now became the biggest fight of my life!!

That morning, I woke up and attempted to get my day started, but something was seriously wrong!  Not only was I still having every single symptom I had all week x10, but I had YELLOW EYES!!  What the heck was wrong with me?!!

I did it, the ultimate comeback! Today I started a new job, at a local non-profit. I had always wanted to work for a non-profit organization, to grow my career within a mission driven organization that does so much for the community we live in. After I was let go from my previous position, I had so much self-doubt and questioned everything in my career that I worked so hard to build. I couldn’t understand the how or the why, I didn’t know how to move forward. Every success I had throughout my career, everything I thought I knew and all the experience I gained, vanished in a blink of an eye! It was all gone, or at least that is how I felt.

Cheers!!!  Today marks 1 year since my last sip of alcohol.  Zero, zilch, none for 365 days. . . .