Today we had our check-in at Mt.Sinai with Mom’s transplant team. The nurses are on strike, good for them, pay them more and give them the benefits they deserve! Get it folks. Anyways, everyone said she looks great and they are so happy that the upped dose of lactulose has kept mom’s bouts of encephalopathy at bay. Those that are missing out on some key information here.. In December Mom was admitted to MMH for an extreme case of altered mental status.

This was an extremely scary time for us and what I can imagine even scarier for her when she finally came back to planet earth. Having to explain to your mom that she had no idea who you were, where she was, or what was going on took a world of hurt for us to do to her. We noticed these times were more frequent leading up to this morning in the kitchen before her hospital admission, and following it they upped her medication (lactulose) to help resolve that issue at a faster speed.

On the long list of daily medications she takes, a few of them work hard against her body to rid the ammonia from it. Your liver is a direct line to your brain, and when your liver is not working, it effects your cognitive functioning. Unfortunately, this is just a side effect which can be temporarily resolved by medications in some cases. Thankfully the dose she is at now is keeping her mentally stable and able to converse and not totally out of it now.

Aside from our regular appointments today; our check-in with transplant team, transplant coordinator, and nutrition, we also visited psych and the heart doctor for an echo. Our next visit will include a stress test that they couldn’t get to today and we will starting going in once a month unless a liver is found sooner.

The team at Mt.Sinai goes above and beyond to make sure that you have everything you need to be prepared for a transplant and be the best possible candidate for surgery. The psych team makes sure that your mental health is generally ~ok~ and look for ways to improve it while you are essentially dying waiting for an organ. Now say that out loud. Yep, just as awkward as it sounds.

So you can imagine that Mom was less than thrilled to be talking about all the things that make her feel sad, and nervous, and anxious but a huge takeaway from today was that she is really starting to come around to realizing that other people go through these things as well. She has recently become extremely overwhelmed with emotion. All sides of emotion; anger, sadness, happiness, fearfulness. Every emotion is LARGE.

On our long car ride home, behind tears, lots of them, she mentioned to me how grateful she is for how much support she gets from people she doesn’t even know sometimes and how she doesn’t even go to church and everyday people tell her that they are praying for her.

The biggest thing we stress to her everyday as often as we can: this situation is temporary.

Thanks for tuning in.

outtie 5000

xoxo

nell