Opened Doors

To try to sum up the recent events, our lives have been a roller coaster ride these past few months. We know for certain that God works in mysterious ways. He’s opened doors that only He could have for us. We are living proof of this.

Eric’s health has steadily been getting worse over time and his physicians told us in January 2009 they believed because of the stage of his disease he had approximately 18 months left to live and the clock was ticking.

We knew that at our hospital in Philadelphia, Pa there were over 500 patients on their transplant list and over 250 patients with Eric’s O+ blood type ahead of him. And his specialist explained they would never be able to get him a transplant in time, and for us to consider options of other hospitals as they did less than 100 transplants a year.

I was not going to give up on my husband’s life that easily. We prayed about it asking God for guidance and to show us what to do. We were clueless how to do this. There were so many questions that we were concerned about, like what would we do with our home, Eric’s work, our children, and grandsons who lived nearby.

After discussing it I contacted Aetna and found other transplant hospitals they were contracted with and I began my intense homework of delving into each transplant center’s statistics, reputations, and best patient survival rates.

It was during this research I found out about the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis. I found it was nationally recognized for its outstanding work and was listed as a center of excellence with Aetna. Once again I started making numerous phone calls to our insurance company, the doctors, and finance department and made the arrangements for Eric to be evaluated in Memphis.




If this hospital was good enough for Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs then it would be good enough for us. So I made an appointment for Eric to be seen by Steve Job's surgeon.

Immediately his current specialist helped by staying on the phone all day making phone calls personally. We made the 10 day trip down to Memphis to meet with the specialist and after tons of tests each day, the doctors gave us the thumbs up that they could help. This was sweet music to our ears, such a huge blessing!

His physician in PA has since transferred Eric's health care to the transplant center in Memphis where we’re expecting for him to get listed soon for a liver transplant hopefully within the next few months if all goes well. His MELD score (blood tests) have took a huge jump in the past two weeks, and this isn’t good news. It is good in the one sense that it moves him higher up the transplant list, --- but it also means he’s getting worse. Time will only tell. But we have faith.

Once again God has answered prayers, and opened a lot of doors for us that we could not have done on our own. Within one months time Eric has officially retired, we have put our home on the market for sale and had numerous friends and family helped us packed up our belongings, rented a 26’ moving truck and moved 1,000 miles way on Thanksgiving Day from Pennsylvania to Mississippi. The best part is that we’re now living only three short hours away from my whole family instead of 18 long hours away and can see them often.

Moving was bittersweet, saying many tearful goodbyes to all of our friends, church family, and leaving our other family members was heart wrenching, especially to leave our two grandsons five-year old Zachary and six -month old Owen. That broke our hearts leaving those two boys.

There have been so many highs and lows we’ve experienced this past year, and it’s brought us closer together and we are celebrating every day we are given. We have so much to be thankful for, and I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Special doctors and hospitals

Do you have confidence in your health care team?

Having trust in your physicians can make all the difference in your recovery as you should be partners in your treatments especially when you have a chronic medical condition. We have been blessed with have a special team of doctors, and an excellent hospital treating Eric.

Eric had an appointment today with his main Hepatologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). His doctor gave us some much needed encouragement and some good advice for his complications from the cirrhosis. We felt her aggressive cutting edge expertise, and experience in the liver disease specialty field is without question. We left feeling more hopeful that we normally do. Perhaps it was due to her kind emotional support from a physician.

She gave Eric the approval to once again be able to add meat back into his diet, and hopefully with another change in his medication he will soon start to feel better. She is genuinely concerned about Eric’s condition, and has given us her private phone line to call her personally with updates on him whether he is experiencing a good day or a bad day. This only adds to our trust in her medical care.



We have every confidence in HUP, their staff, and the transplant team as they have an extraordinary reputation as a world-renowned clinical and research hospital. It was ranked as the # 8 Best Hospital in the United States out of thousands by U.S. News & World Report. HUP has a Level 1 Trauma Center and a fleet of 6 helicopters called PennSTAR used to transport critically injured patients to the hospital. It has 697 hospital beds and a team of 1,663 physicians on staff, in addition to being the nation’s first teaching hospital.

Eric’s doctors are located in the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. It is a state-of-the-art, 500,000 square foot facility that’s attached to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania through a glass crosswalk. This outpatient center cost $302 million to build, and is very impressive.






The professionalism shown by the staff is overwhelming. The staff is especially helpful to keep families updated on patients who are having surgery as they update the boards every 20 seconds on a television monitor of the patient’s status. It reminds me of the airport terminal boards and waiting for a loved one to arrive. It shows the patient’s pre-op status, what time their procedure began and ended, what time they were moved into the recovery room, and their destination if the patient is expected to be released to either go home or if they are to be admitted. Now that's pretty cool to a small town girl like myself.



If you ever need an excellent hospital, we highly recommend this one, but be prepared the valet services are not cheap, expect to pay around $15.00 for your visit.