OHHH!!! If I Only had a Liver!

So after Bookmans year of torture, he sends me to the transplant clinic. This is when I meet one of the best doctors in the world (I'm not kidding), Dr. Wright. He is a gastroenterologist, he really knows peoples butts. But thats an understatement, he know almost every thing there is to know about liver transplantation and its effects on the body. To top it all he has the best bedside manner, he should be studied and a course should be made out of his techniques that every doctor should have to take to become one. Because of these traits he is the busiest person I ever met. Your appointment may be 9 but you wont see him till 10:30. See look at how big of an introduction I gave his, he is The Good.

There is a lot that happens at the clinic and fast. Wright performs all the same things Bookman did and more and in about 4 months. My head was spinning just a little by this point. He did my first colonoscopy, now thats a story.

So I'm about 23, 24 and he said he wanted to do this thing and I ask what happens. If you don't know thats when they shove a tube the wrong way up you. Oh! and thats not the bad part. The bad part is the prep which for the sake of my own psyche I can not go into. Well I do the prep and show up to the thing, get into the gown, get on the table where I can only see the monitor. He comes in and with him a hear a bunch of rustling, by the way all my glory is open to the world at this point. He leaned down, look me in the eye and asked if I minded a few spectators in the form of student gastros. I looked around and saw about 5 other people in white coats with note pads staring back at me or rather my special purpose. What do you say to that question? I looked back at him and said, "Well, they've already seen the good stuff! Why not."

At the clinic there is pre and post transplant patients and you don't see the actual transplant team until you have been worked up by the pretransplant team. For me that was Dr. Wright. The time they take to work you up depends on a lot of factors; the big ones are age, health, and the likelihood of survival. I don't know if my work up was fast, but I know they were really interested in me due to my age and health. Most transplantees at the time were old and in poor health, so the likelihood of survival was not always good. The younger the better. Now they mostly perform transplant on the really young (like 3 and under) or the older and sicker. Medicine has gotten better over the last 8 years. But back then I was a golden child at 24.

After the work up you have the first meeting with the transplant team. This is were the tell you your chance of survival, your chance of getting on the list, where you might be on the list, how long they think you'll be on the list, and they answer any questions you have. They did one more thing with me. They had the anesthesiologist talk to me. He said, "People who don't smoke tend to wake up from anesthesia."

I haven't had a cigarette since that day.