Hello everyone! We thought it was finally time to post an update since Eric is now 40 days post transplant. When they told the family this would be a marathon and not a sprint; they weren’t kidding. They are still inpatient and will most likely be for a few more weeks.

Eric’s incisions are healing well and he finally got all his post surgical abdominal drains removed. 2 times a week he has to go downstairs for colonoscopy and biopsies of his new donor organ to make sure everything is healing well and there are no signs of rejection. The first few weeks after transplant were rough coming off the ventilator and battling early rejection. But the surgical team here is beyond amazing and are watching things very closely. Eric received extra doses of IVIG and the rejection has stayed away. Every few days his blood count seems to start trending down again so they’re also watching his labs closely and giving blood transfusions as needed. His is very anemic and we started daily iron infusions last week as well as EPO injections to help boost his red blood cell production.

They were hoping that his stomach would have woken up by now after surgery but he continues to have severe gastroparesis and they’re having to drain his stomach 24/7.  Eric is working hard to tolerate tube feeds via his new J-tube and is of course still on the TPN. They were hoping to start weaning off of TPN this upcoming week but he has to be able to tolerate the J tube feeds at his full goal nutrition rate. He had been tolerating goal for a few days but since the NG tube for suctioning was removed last Thursday he is struggling and back down to half goal rate. They all have a lot of unanswered questions but all we can do is wait, and pray and take it one day at a time. We will update again as soon as we can! Thank you for all your support.