Nothing new. More tests, we have a dentist's appointment, an MRI, a psych eval and an appointment to drain the acites this week. She is feeling good with no major issues. She does like to talk, so feel free to give her a call!

We met Jayme's liver team yesterday and they rock! Her hepatologist, Dr. Franco came highly recommended by our med student home teacher and I can see why. Everyone in his office was so nice with Jayme and we met with the transplant coordinator, the physician's assistant, and his nurse. They truly are a team. They had already discussed her case on Monday (thanks to Mike for giving them the heads up and getting the Colorado records sent over) and were all up to date. Her doctor is very much the get down to business type. He came in and in a very nice way quickly explained why she is so tired (low blood pressure due to dehydration because of all the water pills they had her on), what needed to be done to get on the list and how the list works. Where you are placed on the list is dependant upon a score, which is determined by 3 tests. I don't remember right off what they are, but she hadn't had them yet, so they couldn't really speculate where she would be. They were all so nice and competent! It is amazing what a difference that combination can make. There are about a million tests that she has to complete before getting on the list. They want to make sure that there are no little things that are going to flare up when she is immuno-supressed after the operation. She has to get a pap, mammogram (lucky her), dental exam, colonoscopy (again, lucky her), upper GI scope, heart stress test, lung test, bone density test, CT scans and more. The next few weeks we will be practically living at the hospital. We are lucky that it is so close and that we are able to do everything there.

She is feeling a lot better now that she has gone off the water pills. It's a good thing, because she is going to need her strength to get through all this testing!

Today I got a letter stating that Jayme's Wisconsin Medicaid has kicked in effective Aug 1. That means that I can start setting up the appointments that she needs before she can get on the list and we can get the ball rolling on all the other testing that will need to be done. Hooray!!!

Otherwise, things are going well. She is feeling very tired, but in good spirits. They have a pericentisis lab here at the hospital and she was able to go in the other day and get 6 liters of acities drained off. It only took an hour or so, which is great because she said that in CO it would take all day.

She has been reading a lot and catching up with her phone calls. Any good book recomendations? She is almost done with the Eragon books. Maybe we will try Harry Potter next.

Keep her in your prayers!

Jayme came home last Friday and has been doing well here. Her incision is healing nicely and yesterday she even felt well enough to come to church with us. The social workers at the hospital are working on getting her WI Medicaid backdated to Aug 1 when she got here. It is driving me crazy not to know what is going on or to be able to take care of it myself, but they have assured me that there is nothing else I can do. It will for sure kick in Sep 1 so I am just waiting to hear back on when I can start scheduling appointments for her. She needs to go to a dentist before she can get on the list and we also need to find her a primary care physician to oversee everything. Once that happens, we should be able to move forward with all the testing for a transplant.

Still in the hospital... Feeling better each day. The social workers here are great. They are trying to clear up the Medicaid mess for this month, which is nice, because that means I don't have to:). We'll see how that works out. The transplant team has been working with Jayme. The psychiatrist has been doing some psych testing and the social worker interviewed me and Jayme to check out her support system and make sure that she would do ok with the liver. Who knew there was so much into just getting a new liver? Her Medicaid will kick in for sure Sep 1 and the transplant social worker said that with how sick she is, they should be able to get Jayme on the list within a couple weeks of the Medicaid kicking in. So, as long as all the evaluations and medical tests work out, she should be on the list by the middle of September! They just performed their 27th liver transplant of the year, so that averages out to be about 3 a month. It varies of course, but I would say that the odds are fairly good. Without being overly optimistic, I think that as long as Jayme hangs on long enough there may be a new liver in store for her.
Carter would be excited. He is always telling her that he is going to get her a new liver. It's really cute. He prays for her disease to go away all the time. He and Grandma have really hit it off. He will just hop up on the bed and chat with her about anything and everything. It works out though; she's a captive audience and he keeps her company. I think it's good for both of them.

Jayme is in the hospital still. She went in on Sunday night because her incision started bleeding. That turned out to be ok, but I think they were surprised at how sick she was in general. The toxins have been building up, so she got a little loopy yesterday, but is doing much better today. There was some concern that her acites was infected, but it turned out to be ok. They seem to really be taking great care of her here. She has already been seen a number of times by the hepatologist as well as a nephrologist. She will probably be in the hospital for another day or two as they make sure that she is stable and her blood pressure goes up (she has really low blood pressure, which I guess is normal for her, but has all of the doctors worried).

They are talking transplant and the social worker over transplants went to talk to her today and I will be talking to her as well. We called SSI today and got her benefits transferred here and they automatically signed her up for Medicaid (what a relief!). There is some confusion over getting coverage for this month, but we will get it all cleared up. They are really doing their best to get her ready for a transplant. I know that I am not alone in saying it's about time!!!