man is back home after liver transplant

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man is back home after liver transplantBy LINDSAY WHITEHURSTALEXANDRIA — The clock at the house is just a clock now. But a few months ago, every soft chime brought 62-year-old Larry an hour deeper into a cloud of pain and confusion.“The waiting is the worst part,” said. “You really have to put your life on hold.” It was only supposed to be a few months. Instead, his wait for a liver transplant stretched on for more than a year, through his wife’s own medical emergency, two false transplant starts and even a weather disaster.“There is a lot I don’t remember of that 14 months. I was in another world,” said. Because his deteriorated liver couldn’t filter the toxins out of his body, the level of ammonia in ’s body rose, causing him to become jaundiced, affecting his thinking and balance.“There were times I would start a sentence and I couldn’t remember what I was talking about by the end. My balance was off — there would be times I would be walking along and run into somebody. I was like a zombie,” he said. contracted hepatitis C when he was 22 from a contaminated blood transfusion, but the disease wasn’t diagnosed until July 2001. In December 2003, ’s doctors said that because the disease had eaten away so much of his liver, he would have to have a transplant.And the waiting began.People who were worse off and those who had harder-to-match blood types ( has universal type O positive blood) got precedence on the transplant list.But despite seeing friends waiting for a liver transplant die before they reached the top of the list, “I never lost faith. I had this peace,” he said.Then in December 2004, his wife, Carol, 63, slipped on a patch of ice outside the house, causing a compound fracture that has yet to heal.“I wasn’t a help; I was almost a liability,” Larry said. “There would be times I would get out of the kitchen and totally forgot (what Carol had said).” The couple got by with a little help from their friends at the andria Church of God, and four of their children, like Troy Jerrils, 36, who took over his father’s investment brokering businesses.“He’s so lively and vibrant, it is hard (to see him sick),” he said. But, “it’s just family. You do it.”“If it hadn’t been for our friends, our family and our church family ...” Carol said, trailing off. “I was incapacitated.”And the hours dragged on. Every time the phone rang, the entire family hoped to hear the Indiana University Medical Center on the other line, ready with a liver. Since the patient has to be there within an hour and 45 minutes and the family lives an hour and 15 minutes from the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis, they lived in a constant state of alert, always ready to go at the sound of a phone call.Twice the doctors did call. “We drove 90 miles an hour all the way there,” Carol said with a smile. Once, the transplant couldn’t be flown in due to electrical storms. The second time, the family was simply told the liver was bad.“Our trip home was a little slower,” she said.Then in the beginning of January, the s, like the rest of andria, lost power for five days after the town was pummeled by the ice storm. The lights were still out when the call came.When they got to the hospital, “We looked like vagabonds. We hadn’t showered or shaved for five days,” Carol said. Just before the surgery, the family gathered and prayed, first for Larry and then for the donor’s family.“In their time of grief, they are giving the gift of life,” Carol said.After two surgeries and more than 100 staples sewing him back up, Larry has a curved purple scar covering much of his abdomen and a healthy liver in his body. By Feb. 20, he was back home, though he’s still on several medications and has to keep a close eye on his blood sugar.The family is working to promote organ donation, lending their voices to a radio commercial. Larry is still waiting, not for an uncertain future, but to get back to softball, traveling and his work.And true to his upbeat form, Larry even sees an upside to the long wait.“We were the most prepared (for the side effects),” he said. “We’ve made some lifelong friends. It’s been a real learning process.”

http://www.theheraldbulletin.com/story.asp?id=11853