I appreciate the inspiration! Yes we have a social worker however he is extremely overworked so he is not able to help much. Also, there aren’t many resources at this location compared to Mayo like the lodging. However he was denied from multiple other transplant centers so he is at probably the only center who would accept him, grateful he has gotten approved and survived through the pre-evaluation process.

I have been attending therapy for years for my own mental health struggles, luckily I have a great therapist and she has been flexible with my unpredictable schedule and I increased our meetings to twice weekly. It does help. I do have friends to lean on but I also like to keep it light most of the time to get a little escape from all the medical stuff here and there. Have discussed though and all have been nothing short of supportive, they just don’t know what to do. I tell them that a hug and their ear is all the help I need sometimes!

It’s unclear exactly what happened, as he is a merchant marine and works overseas for 6-8 months a year where I don’t know exactly what he was doing. But the health issues appeared to start at an overseas hospital July of 2023. He got acute pancreatitis, which was explained to me as resulting from an antibiotic allergic reaction (not sure how true that is now). So he came home and has not worked since. He had been seeing a GI doctor for years due to ulcers and things, I think that is when it was discovered, but he did not tell me at the time. He was first hospitalized and I was made aware of the discovered liver issues in December of 2023. He seemed to be fine after being hospitalized for one week and given one month of prednisone. Then he deteriorated practically overnight, so I dragged him to a different hospital February 7th this year where he was diagnosed with ESLD and advised he urgently needed a liver transplant. Two local transplant centers denied him for evaluation due to alcohol in his system upon arrival at ER. So all the health issues that I thought were just ulcers and GERD, were actually his liver completely failing. I will definitely be checking in here often. Sending good vibes your way!