Catherine (Wind) Euler

Hi all,
Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated about my liver transplant. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting!

In July 2018 Wind was suddenly diagnosed with an auto-immune hepatitis that caused her liver to actually fail in most of its functions. Since then she has been under the care of Dr Reynolds, at St. Joseph's Liver Transplant Unit, in Phoenix, AZ. Both Dr Reynolds and his team have been very caring and respectful, and have given her various pharmaceutical drugs that have slightly improved her liver function. After a long series of medical tests in the Fall of 2018, Wind was put officially on the liver transplant list for the Southwestern region. That means a call to get a new liver could come at any moment, and Bluejay and Wind would head back up to Phoenix for what we expect to be 1-2 weeks of hospitalization after surgery, and a period of at least two months of actually living in Phoenix while the St. Joseph team does careful monitoring.  The prognosis for liver transplant is now quite good, with  St Joseph's being one of the best in the country with a 98% survival rate one year following surgery. The first six months after transplant is usually when a supportive network of friends and family are needed the most, or the entire burden of care falls on Bluejay.

The liver transplant is now the way forward, since without it only 30% of people survive such a liver failure after two years. Auto-immune hepatitis (AIH) is a rare disease affecting only 1-2 people per 100,000. They do not know what causes it, but it could be a combination of environmental and genetic factors. People can live with it for many years without knowing they have it until the liver fails completely, as it did in Wind's case.

Wind is often very tired and unable to do as much as she was used to, but both Wind and Bluejay are coming to terms with the reality before them. Thank you for your prayers and good energy - we can use all we can get as we go through this scary and stressful period of time.