UPDATE: Please Daven for My DH -- Double Organ Transplant

↑ Fox

Tue, Oct 19 2021, 12:14 pm

amother [ Amaranthus ] wrote:

FOX. Thinking of you and your husband. How is he doing a year later? How did he fare through covid?

Thanks so much for asking!

We actually made a Seudas Hodaah this past Sunday. Seeing the difference in his overall health and well-being is truly miraculous.

Because the anti-rejection drugs that transplant patients must take, they have to be very careful about any viral or bacterial illness, let alone Covid. For reasons that are still unknown, the Covid vaccines only work to create antibodies in about 16 percent of transplant patients.

My DH had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine plus a booster -- and developed zero antibodies. He recently had a monoclonal antibody infusion, but he'll need "booster infusions," since the protection only lasts about a month.
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I frequently brag about the amazing infrastructure we're blessed with in Chicago's frum community, and this is no exception. The Chicago Center for Torah and Chesed has a professional staff that makes medical referrals and helps arrange whatever resources are needed.

We would have had no idea that one of the top transplant surgeons in the world works out of a small office in the back of a dingy building at the University of Illinois Chicago medical complex. But getting that information from the CCTC meant the difference between robotic surgery, with a few small incisions, and non-robotic surgery, which requires an 18-24 centimeter incision.

I'll also mention the Chicago Mitzvah Campaign, which provided meals and reading material for my DH. Rabbi Wolf called me every few days to see if there was anything I needed, too.

At one point, my DH had an episode of extreme dehydration (seems the pancreas sends signals to the rest of your body, and his new pancreas wasn't quite with the program yet). Hatzolah of Chicago received permission to take him directly to the UIC facility (about 40 minutes away) instead of the nearest hospital.

So we are profoundly grateful not only to Hashem, but also to His many shluchim, including the transplant team at UIC; the Chicago Center for Torah and Chesed, the Chicago Mitzvah Campaign; Hatzolah Chicago, and everyone who davened for his recovery.