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Showing posts from April, 2004
EXCERPT FROM EMAIL TO FRIEND IN THE UK This is again my Australian friend living in the UK whose baby girl is just 10 days older than Rose. "Rose was placed on the transplant waiting list one week ago, and she's chubby and happy and gorgeous. She has no idea she has end-stage liver failure! It's weird! The doctors reckon kids cope with liver failure heaps better than adults do - I don't get it! Adults would be lying in a hospital bed feeling at death's door, while kids like Rose play and laugh and babble all day long. What's the story? It's a nerve-wracking wait, a bit like waiting for a baby to arrive, really. Very much like it. Every day, you wake up thinking "Is it going to happen today?" Rose is so "ripe" for transplant, having finally grown almost to the weight they wanted her to get to, remaining infection-free, doing all the right things. The challenge now is that she might start to deteriorate before the right liver comes along.
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One of the nurses who has got to know Rose very well. She is currently working as a transplant coordinator with the Victorian Liver Transplant Service based at the Austin Hospital.
EXCERPT FROM EMAIL TO FRIEND ”Shane's doing an extended stint in the hospital this week. . . He's been there since Sunday night. I'm in home quarantine with a cold. It's not even a bad cold, but Lew, Han and I are all infected, so we're keeping our filthy germs to ourselves. Shane and I are being completely over-the-top protective of Rose in the 8 days before she's popped onto that transplant waiting list. It's so important that we keep her infection-free, because they can take kids off the list if they have anything like a cold. Imagine if we had to take her off the list over Easter - one of the busiest times of the year for organs becoming available (you know why: people dying after car crashes. It's too sad!) Anyhow, we just can't risk her getting a sniffle, because if she's not ready for the Easter transplant season, she might have to wait months, go downhill, maybe miss out altogether . . . We're feeling pretty excited about Rosie. She&#