Happy re-birthday!

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To Jon! (June, 2004 - sorry, don't know exact date)

From the archives of 2005:

From: On Behalf Of jms_758

Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 1:21 PM

To:

Hello-

I had my liver transplant at Stanford in June 2004. For about six months, my MELD score was 28, I was #1 at Stanford for the type B group, but was not on the top for my area.

I had two alerts in June to be ready because I was the alternate in case the primary candidate was not acceptable for the transplant.

BOth cases are ordeals, because when you are alerted, you cannot eat or drink till they call you. Which in both cases were over 18 hours.

Also in both cases the donor liver turned out to be not good enough for transplant.

Now a MELD score of 28 is fairly high, I think. Especially in my case, where my kidneys were working great. (About the only thing in me that was working). My bilirubin was 43. That's right, 43, not 4.3.

In my case, since I was on my last legs, my hepatologist was able to request that UNOS upgrade me to a MELD score of 33. If she didn't, I would have definitely died within two weeks, probably due to the MRSA infection I had in the remains of my bile ducts.

Now I hate to tell everyone I had my MELD score raised, because I have no idea how they make those determinations.

Jon