Update on Neal

Ryan posted below if you have not yet seen it. Sorry to overpost you!

First off Neal has MOVED to a private room Rhodes 982. He is up for VISITORS tomorrow morning. He will be in dialysis tomorrow from 11:30 until 4 or so. If anything changes I will repost tomorrow. A magazine or some good jokes may help him to pass the time.

It has been in the works all week, but we are now 99.9% sure the transplant is postponed. I apologize for not notifying all close family about this, but we wanted to be sure. Neal has a couple of things going on. The diverticulitis that he went back in for is not a good situation. Some people may only get this once, but because this is the second occurrence surgery is needed. I will explain this as best as I can in my own words. Basically he has a pocket in his colon that has been infected twice this year, therefore recurrence is most likely. If you leave this untreated, a hole will develop in your colon. Your colon passes your bodily wastes. If a hole develops, your waste could be free in your body, which is extremely dangerous to Neal and to the potential new kidney. Doing the kidney transplant first would put the kidney at risk. The antibiotics seem to have worked miracles. He is probably the healthiest he has been since the rejection. However since this will be his second transplant we want to give it the best possible environment. Having a foreign object (transplant) in your body causes your body to have more antibodies making it extremely difficult to find a donor, therefore we do not want to start out the next transplant with an unsafe environment. In addition, he will be immunosuppressed after the transplant making it difficult to fight off infection. If you remove him from the immunosuppression drugs to cure the infection, the kidney is immediately at risk for rejection. In addition, the did a biopsy of his stomach and found that he has gastritis. This is easily curable, but another hurdle we have to overcome. Essentially he had swelling and some sort of fungus growing in his stomach. He is already on meds to cure this. He has not vomited since entering the hospital, so he is really starting to get his energy level up. I hope you enjoyed my medical explanation, and please feel free to correct me or go to google to hear the doc terms.

We do not have a surgery date for the partial colectomy. I am battling with the surgeons as they do not want to do this immediately. I should rephrase that, the surgeons do not think he is in any harm currently, however the transplant team realizes this has to be done pre-transplant and are trying to push it along. I have contacted any name or number I can get ahold of so hopefully we will have this resolved by tomorrow, but it has been going on since Tuesday and we are aware that patience is the only option. I wish I would have become a doctor!

We have all had a couple of days to deal with this disappointment, however it still SUCKS! We were so close. I will post with any updates I do get from here on out, so please do not ask. Our focus is now to getting Neal as healthy as he can be given the situation. The transplant is still our dream, however we are not quite ready for it yet. Unfortunately these decisions are difficult and disappointing, but we do believe we are making the best decisions we can. We are hoping to get him out tomorrow and have a surgery date ASAP, but again you never know.