Recovery
I am not flying to St. Louis this weekend. I should probably plan a trip to visit my family before the end of the year, but the reason for going now is no longer so pressing: my grandpa was released from the hospital yesterday.
As is usually the case when getting information from a second- or third-hand source, I am not entirely clear on details. My understanding is that his liver is functioning well enough at the moment that the doctors want to leave everything alone. Putting a shunt in his liver is either the last thing they can do before he will need a transplant or the procedure is so risky that if it does not work, he will need a transplant.
So while it isn't clear if his liver will hold out for another six months or six years, they've decided not to do anything drastic. They're going to run the poor organ into the ground before going forward with something that might ruin it in a small fraction of the time.
That said, if everything went as planned, he and my grandma should be home in Quincy now, and I am currently content to stay in Berkeley.
As is usually the case when getting information from a second- or third-hand source, I am not entirely clear on details. My understanding is that his liver is functioning well enough at the moment that the doctors want to leave everything alone. Putting a shunt in his liver is either the last thing they can do before he will need a transplant or the procedure is so risky that if it does not work, he will need a transplant.
So while it isn't clear if his liver will hold out for another six months or six years, they've decided not to do anything drastic. They're going to run the poor organ into the ground before going forward with something that might ruin it in a small fraction of the time.
That said, if everything went as planned, he and my grandma should be home in Quincy now, and I am currently content to stay in Berkeley.