Transplanted and finally updated

Finally have a chance to update the blog. Abel had his transplant on March 12, 2011. I will include a  letter that I sent out to school.

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What an eventful Spring Break!!!!  Karla and I went down to Dallas to visit Abel for the week.  We knew he was not feeling good and Saturday he just briefly commented to me that he wanted to go ahead to the hospital so they could admit him. I didn’t think anything about it but when I mentioned it to my dad he decided to go ahead and call the doctor(I thought he was overreacting). The doctor had just seen him on Thursday and had told my dad to call if anything came up. There was nothing major happening….he just wasn’t feeling well. When dad called the doctor said to go ahead and take him to the emergency room which we did.

When we got to the hospital we waited in the waiting room for about 20 minutes. At that time 2 things happened simultaneously. First was dad got a phone call. He looked at me and his eyes got big when he answered the phone and I thought maybe this was the phone call of all phone calls (saying we had a liver) then he just continued talking casually. Abel had been asleep in his wheelchair (he was not feeling good enough to walk) waiting for them to call him back to a room. At the exact same time the doctor who dad had called came walking into the Emergency room. He came in on his day off (he wasn’t even on call) to check on Abel. My dad at first was ignoring the doctor when normally he would have gotten off the phone to talk with him.  I was puzzled by his behavior and all the sudden dad starts to hand the phone to the doctor and the doctor refuses to take it. Dad said “Do you know what’s going on?” and the doctor said “yes, I found out 10 minutes ago”.  Dad then insists that the doctor speak with the person on the phone giving him a chance to catch me up on what was going on (even though I was standing right there I had no idea). They in fact did have a liver.  The amazing thing was we were already at the hospital when we got the call that there was a liver available.  The rest of the day was spent prepping him for surgery. They wheeled him back around 5:30pm and began surgery around 6:30pm.  Dad found out while Abel was in surgery, the doctor (who came in on his day off) had said on Thursday, that Abel only had 2 weeks left without a transplant. We did not have any news until about 5 the next morning. The doctor said he was in recovery and they were in the process of moving him to ICU (now Sunday morning).  He was doing so well that on Monday they moved him to a regular room. Tuesday they got him up walking and Wednesday started him on regular food. Friday he went home.  He is taking a lot of medication at this point but will be weaned off of it slowly.

He is doing well recovering and went to church yesterday. He was very exhausted afterwards but he is doing well. He is moving around pretty well at this point but has a little trouble if he needs to sit/lie down. His incision looks like a Mercedes symbol (an upside down Y.) Overall he is doing VERY well and we know that most people would not have been out of the hospital yet. Because he received  local liver and because we were already at the hospital, this allowed the time to be reduced before the transplant allowing less problems with the liver.

There is a fundraiser planned for tonight (March 21st) at Blue Sky from 5-10. Another fundraiser will is planned for his (1^st) birthday April 8^th at Rosa’s Café all day. Mention Abel’s name in both cases.

We will also always celebrate his 2^nd birthday on March 12^th.  J

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Today (3/26/11) We went to the mall and after getting stuck in lots and lots of traffic decided to come back home.

Last week when we went to Wal-Mart he used an electric wheelchair to get around. Today when we went to the mall he walked around and didn't even sleep coming home. He is getting stronger everyday but still has a lot of strength to gain back too.