One week of evals...

A week of evaluations entails.....

If you have every been sick enough to garner a week worth of intensive testing to see if you qualify to be put on the UNOS list for an ogran-then you know what that is like. If you are not, here is what a week worths of testing is schedule is like

Tuesday, March 27, 2007
8:00AM Dental Consult-Please report to the hospital 3o minutes early. Also, you are given a perscription for 4 horse pills to prevent infection for the 2 hours of x-rays and poking and prodding they will do to clear your mouth for any possible infections that may be looming.

1:00PM, CT Scan-please starve yourself! Nothing to eat or drink for 4 hours prior to the CT Scan.

2:30PM Clinic Appointment-Here we met with a less than personable Hep doc. He just didn't give me the warm fuzzies. One would think if you are there under going testing, you would think the doc would acknowledge you are sick-but instead leaves you feeling he would rather treat the disease (as if we haven't been doing that for the last 6 years).

4:40PM-FINALLY We get to go home (well hotel anyways) Exhausting and we are only on Day 1!

Wednesday, March 28, 2007.

7:00AM, EKG & ECHO-Have to be there 30 mins early (yeah cause 7 am isn't early enough-heck the sun isnt' even shinning yet!)
8:15AM Stress Test-yeah so they pumped him full of chemicals to stress his heart. Left a most lovely taste of metallic in his mouth. This test lasted until noon.

Mom & I sneak away and let him sleep for a couple hours. His lack of naps is not a happy scenario.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

9:15AM-Admissions-I still don't get what the purpose of this was, we got there showed them the letter, and they told us to just wait.

10:00AM-PFT's-His lungs are healthy-unfortunately he appears to not be using the full function of his lungs due to the enlargement of his liver. This is common in Liver Disease. Which does help explain the shortness of breath and dizziness.

11:00AM-Chest X-Ray-well they actually went ahead and did that when they did the CT Scan.
Woo Hoo we are done a wee bit early. Too bad it is raining cats & dogs so that really just doesn't leave us many options. We went and had lunch-then headed back to the hotel. Where we all napped. I really can't believe how exhausting all this is on everyone!

Friday, March 30, 2007

9:45AM-Cardiologist-Clear bill of health! His heart is healthy & normal. He has free cardio clearance for surgery-wooohooo

1:00PM-Nurse Clinic Appointment-well since they failed to administer the TB test, we cancelled this appt.

2:30PM-Social Work-We met with a social worker at the hospital. She talked to us about transplant patients. What to expect. About after care and medications that patients are on etc. She was impressed by his support-and was happy to see us there and him through this week.

His nurse coordinator-which is a super sweet lady-hopes to have the rest of his files & tests together to present his case to the transplant board this month.

If all goes well, by end of April he should be listed. They are putting him with a MELD score of 19.