Back in the Land of the Living

[Guest guest]

All,

Just wanted to send a quick shout out to everyone now that I'm back

and well on the way to a full recovery. First of all, thanks to

everyone for the thoughts, prayers, calls, cards, etc. Never

underestimate the healing power these seemingly small gestures hold,

especially for the families of those affected.

Of course, an extra special " THANK YOU " goes out to for her

visit. I'm tearing up again thinking about seeing her walk into the

lounge as I was watching TV that day. There couldn't have been a

more unexpected and welcome visitor. Many times over the last six

weeks or so God has seen fit to provide me exactly what I needed at

exactly the time I needed it, but Mel's visit was by far his master

stroke. I think it was especially beneficial for my family (my Mom

in particular) to see someone post-transplant doing so well.

As for the gorey details of the situation, and Mel did a really

good job of keeping you all up to speed. I'd been feeling lousy for

a couple weeks in late August and early September, so when I went for

my regular clinic visit on Sept. 3rd, I had an ERCP scheduled for the

following Friday, Sept. 12. Historically, I'm 100% on pancreatitis

after ERCP, but it's a known issue and usually costs me a day or two

in the hospital and then back to normal. Unfortunately, for some

reason, this time around was just orders of magnitude worse.

Anyway, you all know what happened over the ensuing couple weeks, but

since I've been discharged I've spent another week recouperating at

home (thank God for short-term disability) getting my gut back on

line and my body temperature to self-regulate again. This week I

went back to work half days and expect to be fully back on the horse

for next week.

I had a follow up clinic visit yesterday and all the scrapings they

took during the ERCP came back from Mayo negative, so no imminent

cancer threat. My lipase and amylase are still not quite back to

normal, but the're a helluva lot better than they were two weeks

ago. Interestingly enough, while my MELD spiked to about 16 while I

was in the hospital, all my LFTs are back down around their baseline

levels and my INR is back where it belongs also which puts my MELD

currently back around 10. It's welcome to stay there as long as it

would like. ;-) They actually believe now that the difficulty they

have doing ERCPs on me and passing the contrast dye may be a result

of a congenital abnormality rather than anything specifically PSC

related. Regardless, MRCP will be the preferred method of imaging

unless absolutely necessary from here on out.

In a nutshell, the good news is that unless I have another

cholangitis attack, I don't have to go back to clinic until

February. I'm slowly gaining my strength back from my 40 pound

weight loss and the Rifampin is keeping the itching under control.

All-in-all, life is good!

Thanks again to everyone for your kind thoughts and prayers. That's

what makes this group so special.

Peace,

Bill Wise

PSC '00, Listed TX '04