Picture timeline of my hospital stay.

All the machines I was hooked up to.

Just a few hours after my surgery.

Hard to believe that's me...

Another post op...

First day out of ICU

The tubes in my neck.

The incision

Turning more yellow

Finally getting to go home.

What does that mean?

January 26th, 2011 at about 3 pm and I'm just getting ready to lay down to take a nap, when my phone decides to ring.  Knowing it was OHSU, I was just expecting the call to be for setting up an appointment that I'd been trying to schedule.  I was actually taken back when it was Charlene, my pre-transplant coordinator.  And here was how the conversation went...

Me:  Hello?
Charlene: Hello, is this Jamie?
Me:  Yeah...
Charlene:  Hi Jamie.  It's Charlene from OHSU.  I'm calling to let you know we've got a donor for you.
Me:  What does that mean?
Charlene:  That means we've got a liver for you.
(At this point the shock starts to set in)
Me:  Oh, I suppose that means I should get myself to the hospital...

I made my phone calls to my family members and got my stuff ready.  At this point, I was slowly feeling the jitters of getting scared.  I hadn't myself, gotten the call before, and there was just something that felt different about this time.

Getting up to the hospital, I knew the pre-procedure for the surgery.  The nurses got me all ready and then I had all night to sit and wonder if this time was actually it.  As the time went by, I became more and more nervous, because that meant it was more a possibility that I would really be getting my transplant finally.  I got to the hospital around 4 pm on the 26th, and my surgery was scheduled for 6 am on the 27th.

That morning, the nurses were in and out of my room.  Finally around 7 am they took me down for my surgery.  I was extremely scared.  I didn't know what I was getting myself into.  My "Pit Crew" (my team of nurses), didn't leave my side.  One of the nurses held my hand from when I was in my room, up until the anesthetic knocked me out.  I was very fortunate to feel cared about by so many people that I'd just met.  These were the amazing people that kept me at ease as I was experiencing the last moments of my life as I knew it pre-transplant.  Life was never going to be the same for me.

3 years, and feeling my life is stuck on repeat.

It's safe to say, the next 3 years weren't too easy for me.  I felt like I was a scratched record, and my life was repeating the same thing over and over again.  When finding out I needed to get listed on the transplant list, I had to change my whole way of life.  I had to quit my job, due to the fact that I just had lost a lot of my energy, and the doctors appointments made it hard to work with a hectic schedule.  It was also the only way that I could keep my health insurance.  

I also had really started staying in more.  There were many reasons to this.  I didn't have the energy,  I didn't have the income, and slowly just didn't have much motivation.  I did anything I could to keep my mind off of my current situation.  I immersed myself into video games and the internet, just so I didn't have to think about my liver and being sick.  It definitely did its job, that's for sure.  I had to keep myself as healthy as possible, because even the common cold was resulting in me making a trip to the ER to get myself looked at.  My spleen was very enlarged and blood couldn't even flow through it normally, causing it to have mini "strokes".  Basically, any little complication with any part of my health resulted in me going to the hospital, and half the time getting admitted.

After a year of my liver scores pulling the roller-coaster effect on me, I was told that I might not have to wait much longer.  It finally looked like I was trying to crawl my way up the liver transplant list.  A couple months later I got to experience my first "dry run".  Basically I was a backup for the person that was actually supposed to receive the liver, just incase something were to go wrong.  That was the most uneasy feeling I had ever felt.  To have to go in and be prepped and ready for surgery and then not know if I was even going to be getting anything.  They got me all ready and then were told to send me home, because it was a "Go", on the other patient.  So I went back home and continued to live the life I'd been living.

I rode the roller-coaster for another 2 years or so before I got another "dry run" call.  This time not getting the liver because the surgeons felt it wasn't a close enough match, and I still was healthy enough to be picky and wait for that perfect transplant.  So, once again, the surgeons sent me home.  This time was different though.  That was because I knew I was getting more and more sick.  My swollen spleen (which was caused by my liver) was crowding all my organs and consuming all my white blood cells, causing me to be neutropenic (when your body has a very low white blood cell count, and can't fight off infections) many times.  My stomach was beginning to swell, which made it very difficult to eat.  It also caused me to get very nauseous whenever I would eat.  I had also began getting very bad tremors in my hands.  All of these things were signs of the final stages of liver failure.

I knew I was getting to the end of my rope.  I masked the fact that I was scared with other emotions, such as anger, sadness, and frustration.  I had actually started to give up on the thought of ever actually getting my transplant.  I was taking everything out on those I cared about, and I was realizing that I had some true anger problems.  This went on for the last 6 months of my waiting process.  I had become someone I didn't even really know anymore.