Exit Plans to California

Well, we are starting to get some plans in place for heading home. As it stands now, we are flying home on June 21^st. Meg is flying here on the morning of the 20^th to help us get home. The next week, she, Jen, and Lucy are flying here to pick up our car and then have a road trip to CA.

After I posted the last blog, Charlie did spend a week in the hospital – I took him in for the encephalopathy and after taking a chest x-ray they found out that he had what they called a “hospital infection” or pneumonia. They figured that this was what had set off the confusion again. So he was on IV antibiotics all week.  He has been home almost a week and is doing well.  He has several doctor appointments along with procedures – endoscopy and paracentesis lined up before we leave.

We have decided not to do some traveling around here and that we had best get home and get settled there again. We are going to miss Iowa City – it really is a great place and was just listed in the “Top Ten University towns.” We have loved our apartment and its location, but it will certainly be nice to be home again and to be with all of you.

Last Sunday 3 of my girlfriends from Des Moines came up to visit and we had a fun lunch and enjoyed playing some cards. It has been such a plus to be able to get reacquainted with them!

Doug will be here for a couple of days next weekend on his way to Chicago on business.  I have big plans for him!! We have packed up many boxes that need to be mailed home and he can provide the muscles to help me get them mailed.

Boy have we been having the severe weather – tons of rain (we are in a flood warning) and it is so humid! Last year we did not have hardly any rain and now this one is so rainy that the farmers can not get into the fields to plant.

Looking out the window I see that the latest storm has passed by now on to the next one coming through.

Please keep us in your prayers for a safe trip home with Charlie.

Mary and Charlie

May 15^th - The Roller Coaster Ride has crashed!

Well, it has continued to be a rough ride since the last post and we had a meeting with the transplant team today (Charlie has been in the hospital since yesterday) and the bottom line is that they are NOT putting Charlie back on the transplant list! They feel that he would not make it through surgery. Meg wrote the following for me after she talked to the transplant surgeon – “With the combination of how he reacts to anesthesia and his cardiac problems they can’t risk doing the surgery. The surgery that he needs is quite a bit more complicated than an already complicated liver transplant due to the extensiveness of clots in his portal liver vein system. He would not be able to handle the complex parts of the surgery when he would need to have intense resuscitation.  And…while the transplant surgeon feels confident that he could perform the surgery/reattachment of the donor liver, the anesthesia team does not think it is likely that they can keep him alive during the process. They have determined the risk is too great.

The transplant surgeon assured us that they will facilitate coordinating care in locations where we will likely be – Roseville, Portland, and Seattle – so we will be able to have medical care in place at these locations. He also said that despite how grim it often feels, that he(Charlie) could live quite a while longer – even to the degree of it being something else that could be life-ending rather that the liver.

We are going to take our time in figuring out what we want to do and how Charlie wants to create this next phase of life and go from there. Right now, we are devastated and kind of in shock!

We probably won’t head home to CA until the end of June giving us some time to get out and do some things in the Midwest since we have been so closely tethered to Iowa City.

We continue to ask for your prayers as we start to adjust to this news and we are just very thankful for all of your thoughts and prayers over the last 17 months. We do know that God has a plan for us….

Once we get plans going we will post a blog!

Mary and Charlie