My Story

I remember the day I was diagnosed with P.S.C, it was the day before my 19th birthday, June 23rd, 2006. The doctors originally thought that I wouldn’t need a transplant until I was 35 or 40 but that would soon change. I was transferred down to the University of Utah to have a treatment called an ERCP, (they stick a camera down your throat and look into your common bile duct and very intermediate opening to your liver duct system. I woke from that procedure to my parents next to the bed. when I fully came to they told me that they discovered that I needed the transplant within the next two years or I would be in serious trouble.

I was put on the transplant list 3 weeks later and began my wait. My skin grew yellower and yellower then to a kind of green color. I stayed in school and did three semesters in a row before I stopped in the middle of the next summer. At the very end of July 2007 I had my last ERCP and went I woke up I got the bad news. Doctor Adler, a top PSC doctor told me that my liver was shot. It had fallen to a process called pruning. Which means that there were no more bile ducts in my liver, even the opening to the common bile duct was clogged with scar tissue. He has seen thousands of cases and he told me that mine was hands down the worst he has ever seen. It was not the news that you want to hear.

Just as Doctor Adler predicted my health started to decline rapidly. My MELD score shot up and by the first week of October I was at a score of 38. The doctors were worried but were okay with me not being hospitalized cause I was still getting along, going on walks everyday, and still relatively my self. I did have some chemical unbalancing that caused me to be really spacey but my friends say that’s how I have always been. Finally early in the morning hours of October 28th I got the call for my transplant, first at 1 in the morning and then again at 3 in the morning. The final ok was given at 10am, I took my pre transplant pills then my parents and I headed to Utah.

I finished my surgery prep and I was wheeled into the operation room at exactly 8:00 pm. Ten hours later I came out of the surgery. I stayed in the ICU for a 2 days and the got transported to a different wing of the hospital. After a week and a day total I was released from the hospital. I stayed with some family friends who lived in the area for another five weeks and then headed home right in time for Christmas. The day I left the transplant coordinator asked me, “What do you think you are going to do now that you have your new liver?” I figured I still had a long recovery ahead of me because I was still unable to lift even five pounds. I told him, “Probably not much for the first year, I just need to recover.”

It has now been a fifteen months since my transplant and I am pretty sure I have exceeded every expectation I had for myself. It’s good to back to my normal life, although it has been all but that, normal. It has been a whirlwind.