Day 16 - More disappointment

I'm being kept in, again. My temperature has been perfectly fine for the past 24 hours so I think they have ruled out the possibility that there is a problem with that. Unfortunately my AST blood level is still remaining stubbornly high, so the medics had a meeting and decided they want me to remain in until at least Monday. If it hasn't come down over the weekend then they will have to do a liver biopsy. That essentially involves sedating me a little, putting lots of local anaesthetic in one side of my abdomen, and inserting what amounts to a very thin apple-corer into my side into the liver to remove a small sample.

In between the last paragraph and this I've just had some explanation (this is all very up-to-date!). I'm being sent for an ultrasound scan which will look at the flow of blood around my liver. They want to examine the 'patency' of my blood vessels in the liver (the extent to which they are open and free-flowing). If there are issues with that (which there have not been in previous ultrasounds), or if the AST-levels remain the same (not dangerously high but just stubbornly not normalising), then a liver biopsy will enable them to have a look at the vessel structure under the microscope.

There is a possibility that the reason things are not normalising is that I am experiencing very mild rejection of my new liver, and would therefore have to increase my steroid and immunosuppression dosage for the time being.

Further updates after the scan. This is all slightly concerning, but the doctors don't seem to be worried that it is a major problem at the moment, just something that will need attending to before I go home. Shame really, as I'm well enough now that hospital is beginning to get very boring indeed!