The surgery went well, and Jayme was discharged from the hospital this evening. She is feeling as well as can be expected and is ready for her flight tomorrow. We'll keep our fingers crossed that all will go well!

Feeling Better!

Jayme is feeling much better lately. Today she is working on sitting up so she will be ready for her flight. Her kidneys are back up and running, and the doctors say that if her kidneys shut down while she is on the transplant list they will do dialysis until she gets a liver and then the kidneys usually start working again. She is scheduled for her surgery tomorrow afternoon to close the hole in her belly button and tie off some bleeding veins in her throat.

Mike has been in touch with the transplant coordinator here in Milwaukee, Marie, who just happens to be Dr. Franco's nurse. He is the hepatologist that she will be seeing as long as all goes well - he comes highly recommended from our medical student home teacher. She was very frustrated with the level of care that Jayme has been receiving at University Hospital and seems motivated to help Jayme. She has already requested her records and is doing everything she can to get Jayme in to see Dr. Franco as soon as possible. He is on staff at Froedert, so he will be actively involved in the transplant process. Mike has done a great job getting the ball rolling with all of her health care out here, and I think we are all feeling confident that she will do well out here. We are just excited to have her finally get here (and for Mike to be home)!

Catch Up

As of today, the plan is to bring Jayme out to Milwaukee on Friday. Mike left this last Friday thinking that he would be returning with her tonight, but the situation with her belly button is worse than what we thought (she developed a hole in her peritoneum though her belly button that needs to be fixed). She is scheduled for surgery (basically just stitching it closed) on Tuesday and the doctors say she should be able to travel by Thursday and she may even be well enough to just come to our place instead of going straight to the hospital like we thought. We'll see though. All of our plans keep changing, so who knows. She is feeling better this past few days - I think it has really helped her to have Mike out there with her. They have been watching movies and hanging out at the hospital. In his spare time, Mike has been cleaning up the house, getting it ready to sell. According to the neighbor, it was just a drug house, so even though he has changed the locks, he is a little bit afraid to be there alone. I can't say I blame him.

Otherwise we are just doing whatever we can to get things ready to go for her. We went and picked up some medical supplies the other day and I am working on the Medicaid application. I have run into a little bit of a problem in that I don't know which name to put on the application:). SSI seems to have gone through, so she should have enough to pay the mortgage until the house sells, which is very nice.

Hopefully with SSI going through, we will be able to get her on Medicaid out here quickly so she can be evaluated for a liver transplant. I did look up the info on liver transplants out here vs. Denver and it looks good. The list is a lot shorter (80 or so vs. 475 or something like that). Froedert (the hospital she will be going to out here) has a 81% transplant rate vs. University of Denver's 17%. That makes us hopeful that she will have a much better chance of getting something out here. We will keep our fingers crossed!

A new blog is born!

I thought it would be nice for there to be a place where our family can go to check up on how Jayme/Phyllis is doing. So, here it is! I will do my best to keep it updated, and hopefully once we have her here and all settled in, she will do some posting as well.

So far, this is what we have: We have been working hard to get her room all set up. It has all been painted except for the doors, and the furniture is in (thanks to some friends for some donations and Craig's List for everything else). We are just waiting on a bed, which we should be getting once our friends get a new one.

I just bought plane tickets today for Mike to go out and pick her up on Friday the 25th. They will be coming back here on Sunday the 27th. Look for more after that!