A belated welcome home

Ben was allowed to come home from the hospital on Sunday. We were packing him up just one week and one hour after they made the first incision for his transplant. Pretty amazing huh?

He's doing really well except for he's in an ton of pain. One look at his wound and you can tell why he's hurting so much. Infact, it's so stomach turning to look at, I'm not even posting a picture of it. Just trust me, it's a funky mess right now.

So for those of you that like little tidbits of info, here's some interesting facts;

*Ben's taking 30+ pills a day right now, plus daily long lasting insulin and occasionally fast acting insulin based on meal time blood sugar tests.

*He has to avoid outside visitors for now. Since he's still healing, he has a higher risk of catching something plus it would be miserable to catch a cold right now. If anyone wants to e-mail a message to him, you can do so to "eleven272008 at gmail dot com".

*Ben is almost flesh color again vs. the lovely yellow glow that jaundice gives you. I had no idea how jaundice he was all along. Honestly, I've never seen his forearms the color that they are now.

*Twice a week he has to show up for liver clinic at 7 a.m. at the hospital. This should only be for a few weeks, then he'll go once a week for a while, then once every other week, once a month, etc. depending on how he's progressing.

*He can't go barefoot outside or garden without gloves for the rest of his life. And no changing the litter box.

*He has to eat a ton of protein every day to help heal his incision. This is testing my cooking skills since I'm a 20 year vegetarian. I'm still a little shocked that I managed to fix him a cheeseburger that he said was good. The things we do for love :)

*Ben's post transplant hospital stay was 7 days. The norm is 8-10 days. Go Ben!

*The only thing we know about the donor was that they were 44 years old. No idea if they were male or female, what area they were in, or how they passed away. At some point, we can write a letter to the family. I don't think we're ready to do that just yet. It's an incredibly emotional process and I want to wait until the right time. I'm not sure if they'd be ready to read a letter just yet either.

So that's the update for now. I'm so far past tired and Ben is too but at the same time, we are so very thankful. It's hard to complain too much when not everyone gets to come home so fast or does so well post transplant. Once Ben's pain level is better (which it seems to be improving over the past 12 hours), it will be interesting to see the changes and improvements that come along each day. It's amazing to witness the healing that we are capable of. It's like watching a miracle.