Quote:
Originally Posted by adultinnovation
Why didn't he just get a Liver transplant. He must have the money
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You will not get a liver transplant just because you want or need one. If you have a history of abusing yourself through drinking, drugs, promiscuity, not following medical advice, even refusing a covid vaccine or not have a support system established with family or friends for your care after transplant, they will not give you an organ and pass it along to a better candidate that does follow the guidelines and doesn't have a history of high risk behavior and has a support system in place. And you can't just tell them your family will help you, they will meet and interview your personal support team and make sure they know what this entails and see if they are still dedicated to providing care for you afterwards. The recovery period if nothing goes wrong is at least a year.
They give the donor liver more consideration than the do for the patient. They consider it to be their liver. They only give them to the people that they think can survive for at least 5 years after transplant. Otherwise it is not considered a successful transplant, and they really do not like having unsuccessful transplants on their records. 20% of transplant recipients die within the first five years. If you have too many risk factors, the transplant board does not accept you and sends you off to palliative care, try to keep you comfortable until you die. And you'll die pretty quickly. At least it's not physically painful.
They treat the organ like it's more valuable than gold. There are not enough organ donors to supply the demand for organs. A donor organ has to have matching anatomy for the patient as well. It has to be sized right, and it has to be healthy. Only about 30% of people that even make it onto the transplant list actually get an organ in time before they die. The organs are only given to the absolute sickest people on the list.
It's not near as simple as saying "just go get a transplant".
I'm 18 months out from my transplant and I'm doing great. But I do everything they tell me and I research all the time on other patients that have died, why they died, and see if I can learn and not make mistakes.