UPDATES

First of, I want to apologize for not keeping up with this blog as well as I had hoped I would. With 11 kids, homeschooling, kids' activities, and Yulia's care, there is little time left at the end of day, and I fall into bed.

So yes, Yulia is listed. They are working through donors. They are telling us there as been an overwhelming response and that she has many potential donors. I know some of the first ones that they were working through may not work out so they will likely start working up some more next week. Yulia is in good spirits. Her BUN (which indicates how poorly her kidneys are functioning) keeps rising. We recently had to add another cycle of dialysis midday. We are so hopeful that we can get to transplant in May or June. With kids coming home from college in early May, and another graduating from college mid May, it would work well to transplant in late May or early June. Of course, if we had a donor identified and could do the transplant earlier, we would make it work. We are just reminding ourselves that it is not our timing, but God's.

We had to get Medicare for Yulia as well. Since we are retired military, we have Tricare but since it is an other government program, we have no choice. We are so thankful that it is an option for others who need help, but for our particular situation, it caused our medical costs to increase by thousands of dollars for the next 3 or 4 years.

Our lawyer served Duke in early March. Duke has filed a request to have our case dismissed. It is a frustrating that they can treat patients the way they did and just expect no ramifications from it. Our lawyer should contact us next week with plans. I just don't know what the right answer is. Yulia's transplant should have been in Nov/Dec. We have already been delayed 5 months, and we still don't have a date set or even a donor identified. Maddening that Duke can do this and we just sit here and take it. We will likely proceed to continue legal action against them and hope and pray we have the funds to pay the legal fees. It really is like David taking on Goliath. We will just keep praying and hoping. We just don't want to have others face the same thing we have had to face.

Again, we are so grateful for all the encouragement, prayers and financial support. It really means alot to us. I will try to do better with updating as we move into these next few weeks.

God bless you all!